Satellite Data Sources

Worldwide news articles, read for what happened, where and when, and folded into one record per real-world event. This is the backbone of the Watchfloor, the Watchlist, the Reports and the API.

Typical uses: Discovering emerging events, screening a region or topic, and deciding what to confirm with satellite imagery. Each event keeps when it happened (with the precision and basis the reporting gives) apart from when it was first and last reported.

Events that news coding does not capture well come straight from the agencies that measure them: significant earthquakes from the USGS, and volcanic-ash advisories (SIGMETs) issued by the responsible flight information region.

Typical uses: Seeing a large earthquake or an ash cloud on the same map and timeline as the reporting about it, with the agency's own time and location.

Moderate earthquakes from the USGS feed of magnitude 4.5 and larger that have a registered facility close to the epicentre. Off-Nadir Delta makes the match by distance; the earthquake record itself is the USGS one.

Typical uses: Knowing that an earthquake was recorded close to a port, dam, plant or base, with the distance to each. It does not say how strongly a facility was shaken or that it was damaged.

Near-real-time sulfur dioxide measured by Sentinel-5P, read around volcanoes that have a current volcanic ash advisory. Off-Nadir Delta does not provide the gas measurements themselves: it records, as SO2 Anomalies, the days on which the gas around a volcano is clearly above the local background.

Typical uses: A second, independent line of evidence next to a volcanic ash advisory. It does not give the size of an eruption, the height of a plume or whether ash was present.

The wind radii of National Hurricane Center forecast advisories, matched to the registered facilities and straits inside them. Off-Nadir Delta is not affiliated with NOAA, and the record is not an official forecast or warning.

Typical uses: Seeing which registered ports, plants, bases and straits lie inside a storm’s forecast tropical-storm-force wind field. It is a forecast, not an observation of wind or damage.

Published measurements of how many ships pass each strait and canal, derived from ship-tracking (AIS) signals. Off-Nadir Delta does not provide the measurements themselves: it records when a place leaves its own usual level, as Transit Anomalies, and gives each place an index against that level.

Typical uses: Seeing that ship traffic through a strait or canal has moved away from its usual level, next to the reporting about that place. It is a measurement and never states a cause.

Every event links the reporting it was built from — the latest article from each outlet that carried it on every plan, and every article with the report behind each stated fact on plans that include source detail. When an article names a place only coarsely, other reporting of the same event found by web search can supply a finer place; it is kept with the excerpt it came from.

Typical uses: Verifying a signal against its origin, and following a Key Judgment to the reporting behind it. Link availability and source reliability vary by event.

A registry of airports, ports, military bases, power plants, dams, bridges, chokepoints and named seas from OpenStreetMap and Wikidata, used to resolve the places reporting names and to link events to facilities. Short reference summaries of named places come from Wikipedia, quoted with attribution.

Typical uses: Finding a facility by name in many languages, and seeing which events were linked to it and how.

Terrain height at a point or over an area, SAR layover and shadow, and line of sight between two points, from the Copernicus 30 m digital elevation model.

Typical uses: Reading relief around a site, and judging whether terrain hides a target from a radar look direction.

Current orbital elements for 13 satellite families, propagated to predict when a place can next be imaged — free systematic missions separated from commercial satellites that must be tasked.

Typical uses: Deciding whether to wait for the next free pass or task a commercial satellite.

Cloud-cover and visibility forecast that Delta Agent uses when advising between optical and radar for a place. It is a forecast, not an observation, and it does not feed the event records.

Typical uses: Deciding between optical and all-weather radar for a target.

Daily energy prices and market volatility shown beside the World Brief for context. Informational only — not investment advice.

Typical uses: Reading a day's events next to the energy and volatility moves around them.

OpenStreetMap provides the basemap and place context; NASA GIBS serves daily global browse layers (VIIRS, active fire, and the recent Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 passes on the public viewer pages); OpenStreetMap land polygons (Natural Earth as a fallback) mask land in ship detection; and Copernicus Global Flood Monitoring supplies the observed flood extent the AI assessment uses to frame a flood that spans several regions.

Typical uses: Orienting a signal to nearby places and coastlines, excluding land from vessel detection, and framing a flood on its mapped extent.

Articles are read for what happened, where and when, classified (category, severity, GEOINT relevance), placed only as far as the reporting names the place, linked to their sources, and — for events that could reach a shortlist — matched to a recommended sensor and resolution. There is no human in the loop.

Typical uses: Turning reporting into a decision-ready signal with a sensor recommendation. Treat outputs as decision support, not confirmed fact.