PANDA-WATER: PRISMA Products and Applications for inland and coastal WATER

The PANDA-WATER project, funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), aims to provide a set of innovative products from PRISMA hyperspectral imagery over inland, transitional, and coastal waters, and to assess its suitability for addressing challenges in aquatic sciences and ecosystem management, exploiting the radiometric sensitivity and the spatial and spectral resolutions. These products will focus on: i) accurate estimates of optically active water constituents; ii) advanced water quality parameters (i.e. particle size distribution, suspended and coloured dissolved matter quality); iii) water depth and benthic substrate; iv) natural or artificial floating materials; v) attenuation coefficient and euphotic depth; vi) cyanobacteria and harmful algal blooms. The novelty of PANDA-WATER stems from the application of the state-of-the-art-algorithms adapted to the characteristics of PRISMA, thus resulting in observational capabilities, complementary to the current Copernicus missions. The product development carried out within PANDA-WATER from PRISMA data will also be suitable for upcoming hyperspectral missions (i.e., Copernicus CHIME, NASA's PACE, and SBG), thus contributing to the global advance in spaceborne imaging spectrometry.