OPERA

Data Tutorials

Background

The Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) product suite is designed to collect data from satellite radar and optical instruments to generate three products:

  • a near-global Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWx) product suite
  • a near-global land-surface Disturbance (DIST) product suite
  • a North America land-surface Displacement (DISP) product suite

Only DSWx products will be distributed through PO.DAAC. More information can be found on PO.DAAC’s OPERA webpage.

Data Resources & Tutorials

Imagery Exploration

Surface Water Extent Worldview StoryMap

SOTO by Worldview - explore OPERA imagery in a GUI

Video Tutorial: Exploring OPERA Surface Water Extent Data in NASA Worldview

Search & Download

Via Graphical User Interface:

Find/download OPERA data on Earthdata Search

Via Command Line - PO.DAAC subscriber/downloader example:

podaac-data-subscriber -c OPERA_L3_DSWX-HLS_V1 -d ./data/OPERA_L3_DSWX-HLS_V1 --start-date 2023-04-04T00:00:00Z -e .tif

See how to Download/Subscribe for more information on how to use the PO.DAAC subscriber/downloader.

Access & Visualization

Cloud

AWS Cloud: OPERA Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWx) Data - How to search for, access, visualize, and mosaic OPERA data over lake Powell while working in the cloud.

Local

Local Machine: OPERA Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWx) Data - How to search for, download, visualize, and mosaic OPERA data over lake Powell while working on a local machine.

GIS

NASA Earthdata GIS (EGIS)

StoryMap: Exploring Water Surface Extent with Satellite Data

OPERA ArcGIS Toolbox - GitHub repository with three geoprocessing tools: OPERA Granule Download, OPERA Granule Filter, and OPERA Raster Mosaic

Other Resources

OPERA Project GitHub Notebooks - check out the leafmap examples!

NASA Mission Page

NASA ARSET - Part 2: Overview of Monitoring Floods using OPERA Surface Water Extent Based on Optical and SAR Observations. You can also review the slides. For example, there is:

  • Guidance on Which product is more appropriate for my application? at minute 33 of the presentation.
  • Discussion of SAR (S1) and optical (L8/L9) in Worldview
  • How combining SAR and optical OPERA DSWx products can help, depending on your use case.