Potential directions for applications of satellite earth observations data in Egypt

A wide variety of earth observation (EO) satellites with a broad range of sensors have become recently available and provided an enormous data volume for many applications. So far, the EO community in Egypt has not used the data to their full potential. A need to expand the utilization of the data and modernize applications has been identified by many researchers in Egypt and the Arab region. This paper outlines a few thoughts and research directions to satisfy this need. It provides a quick review on modern trends of the EO data applications and explains the use of calibrated data in retrieval of geophysical parameters. Synergistic use of data from different sensors is addressed. The importance of using the data to study both global and regional-scale phenomena, rather than concentration on local phenomena, is highlighted. The use of EO data in supporting the geophysical modeling using the data assimilation approach is also pointed out.