Mark Sweeney

Bio: CDR Mark Sweeney has been flying diverse missions for NOAA for over 10 years. Originally commissioned in the Navy after graduating from the ROTC program at Cornell University, CDR Sweeney spent 10 years flying P-3s throughout the Pacific and Middle East theaters. He supported ground operations in Afghanistan starting the first few months after 9-11. He finished his Navy time with a tour at the Naval Research Lab flying his first hurricane missions in a joint research program with NOAA. CDR Sweeney executed an inter-service transfer to the NOAA Corps in 2006 and has since been flying missions such as Hurricane research and reconnaissance, airborne gravimetry, air chemistry, ocean wind satellite calibration, atmospheric river studies, and a host of others. He is currently the deputy chief of the Remote Sensing Division at NOAA's National Geodetic Survey and has been flying their coastal mapping and emergency response missions since he started in NOAA.

NOAA Emergency Response Imagery Program

NGS’ Remote Sensing Division acquires and rapidly disseminates a variety of spatially-referenced remote-sensing datasets to support homeland security and emergency response requirements. This includes both nadir and oblique imagery in GIS ready formats for use by emergency responders, other government agencies, and the public. From January 1 to January 18, 2016, NGS collected emergency response imagery following the flooding of the Mississippi, Arkansas, and Meramec Rivers in the Midwest. The imagery data has many applications, including determining the extent of damage and helping to support safe navigation. This talk will provide an overview of the emergency response imagery program capabilities, workflow, and available data.

emergency response, imagery, NGS, remote sensing