Translating Radiometric Requirements for Satellite Sensors to Match International Standards

International scientific standards organizations created standards on evaluating uncertainty in the early 1990s. Although scientists from many fields use these standards, they are not consistently implemented in the remote sensing community, where traditional error analysis framework persists. For a satellite instrument under development, this can create confusion in showing whether requirements are met. We aim to create a methodology for translating requirements from the error analysis framework to the modern uncertainty approach using the product level requirements of the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) that will fly on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series (GOES-R). In this paper we prescribe a method to combine several measurement performance requirements, written using a traditional error analysis framework, into a single specification using the propagation of uncertainties formula. By using this approach, scientists can communicate requirements in a consistent uncertainty framework leading to uniform interpretation throughout the development and operation of any satellite instrument.