Rapid Assessment Platform for Integrated Data (RAPID)

A major priority of the Atmosphere community (meeting in April 2026 at NASA LaRC, ~800 attendees) is that the (i) disaggregated orbits/launching schedule of the individual NASA satellite missions, (ii) growing use of commercial satellites, (iii) increased use of ML-based satellite retrievals and (iv) upcoming candidate mission architectures that might arise from the 2027 NAS Decadal Survey recommendations all accelerate the need for maintaining close ties to the integrated observing-modeling framework being developed in IMVI (Integrated Modeling Virtual Institute). The framework we propose here, called Rapid Assessment Platform for Integrated Data (RAPID), will efficiently quantify the benefit of any proposed new spaceborne observation and suggest optimal spatial and temporal sampling and accuracy in the context of the existing program of record. As such, it will bring together the core modeling capabilities in IMVI with the mission/instrument design expertise across NASA GSFC Code 610. It will also benefit other NASA centers and the broader scope of NASA Sciences and Exploration Directorate (SED) (e.g., an integrated approach to Martian modeling and prediction). RAPID places GSFC in a more competitive position to pursue future work and is designed with several principles in mind — to support NASA-funded efforts across all centers; to be widely available for use across the Agency; to retain the diversity of its many modular components; and, to represent major guardrails for NASA to maintain gold standard satellite-based science products. The key novelty of RAPID, in a budget-constrained environment, is to provide faster answers to key questions such as: For the same Geophysical Variables (GVs), which competing retrieval algorithm(s) should be prioritized in the event multiple algorithms cannot be supported? Which combination of planned satellite sensors should we prioritize to retrieve the most impactful GVs? How well do we need to observe these GVs to constrain model predictions and by how much would these model prediction uncertainties be reduced? We consider the current readiness of RAPID to be TRL 2 and expect this IRAD to advance the system to TRL 4.

TRL 2 → TRL 4 for Rapid Assessment Platform for Integrated Data (RAPID); efficient quantification of the benefit of any proposed new spaceborne observation; optimal spatial/temporal sampling and accuracy recommendations in context of existing program of record; supports algorithm prioritization under budget constraints.

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