Commercial Satellite Imagery: An Evolving Tool in the Non-proliferation Verification and Monitoring Toolkit

Abstract

Although commercial satellite imagery has already been proven to be an effective and accepted means for nuclear monitoring, verification, and mission planning for IAEA safeguards purposes, it is continuing to advance as a result of significant new improvements in terms of temporal, spatial, and spectral resolutions from increasingly diverse and rapidly growing international satellite constellations. It remains a critical verification technology that provides an optimal, non-intrusive, capability to both follow-up on geospatial cueing information from other open-sources and to remotely “peer over the fence” to obtain new and unique information from otherwise inaccessible areas, anywhere on earth, on a consistently repetitive basis. The improving (“faster, better, cheaper”) means of access to this multi-resolution imagery diversity is providing increased opportunities for open-source information augmentation and unexpected data-fusion synergies. The open-source geospatial tools (e.g., Google Earth) continue to keep pace as efficient and cost-effective means to contextually visualize that imagery in 3D as well as promote greater global transparency. This ongoing commercial satellite imagery (r)evolution continues to add to the expanding and transforming open-source tool-kit to derive and assess new nuclear non-proliferation relevant information critical for enhanced global nuclear security.