USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science Announces Release of an Open-Source AI Foundation Model for Extreme Weather, Built in Collaboration with BCG X AI Science Institute and NASA

WASHINGTON, May 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Universities Space Research Association's (USRA) Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science and the Boston Consulting Group's BCG X AI Science Institute today announced the open-source release of the GAIA (Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Atmospheres) Foundation model, built in collaboration with NASA. It is a novel GenAI model aimed at addressing one of the most urgent challenges of our time: predicting and understanding extreme weather events.

The model was trained and tested on 25 years of data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and data from the European Meteosat (EUMETSAT) and Japanese Himawari weather satellites for global coverage. The initial release includes downstream applications for filling gaps in satellite data coverage and for precipitation, and is poised to support tracking and forecasting tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers and other extreme weather phenomena in support of disaster preparedness, response and recovery as well as other use cases.

Over the past two decades, the cost of natural disasters has surged more than 100-fold, now totaling tens of billions of dollars annually. To confront this escalating crisis, the research team has moved beyond traditional task-specific machine learning models, which require separate models for each weather event, to a single, global foundation model that supports multiple extreme weather phenomena within a unified framework.

This marks a first major milestone of the partnership formed in April 2024 to pioneer geospatial AI for science and engineering as part of USRA's new Generative Artificial Intelligence Lab for Science & Engineering, managed within USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science. This partnership combines USRA's artificial intelligence and Earth science expertise with BCG X AI Science Institute's advanced engineering and data science expertise, and NASA's comprehensive data, and leverages USRA's partnership with the National Research Platform (NRP), a National Science Foundation (NSF) -funded network of high-performance computing resources at Universities across the United States.

Dr. Elsayed Talaat, President and CEO of USRA, stated, "USRA is among a select group of institutions developing foundation models for satellite data. This new collaboration with USRA, BCG X, and NASA goes beyond the foundation model research that USRA and NASA are already doing for Earth observation and space weather – it takes it a step further into tracking and forecasting extreme weather applications."

Dr. David Bell, Director of USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) and Co-Founder of the GenAI Lab for Science & Engineering stated: "This model advances the state-of-the-art with a new approach for balancing attention of the model across local and global features in geospatial data and represents a step towards our broader vision of geospatial AI for public good applications." Dr. Olivier Raiman, Co-Founder of the GenAI Lab for Science & Engineering, stated: "The GAIA's Foundational Model for the Planet places our GenAI lab at the forefront of the upcoming AI race for Space Intelligence."

The foundation models developed through this collaboration are openly available on Hugging Face https://huggingface.co/bcg-usra-nasa-gaia, reinforcing the team's commitment to open science and shared progress.

USRA stands apart with a distinguished legacy in artificial intelligence, having supported NASA missions with AI research since 1983. Today, with over 40 years of AI R&D experience, USRA continues its nonprofit mission: to deliver transformative, scalable technologies that benefit humanity in partnership with leaders across academia, industry, and government.

Additional Resources:

To learn more about the GAIA Foundation Model, read the team's paper published on arXIv.

The GAIA Foundation Model is available for download on Hugging Face.

About Universities Space Research Association (USRA)
USRA conducts major research and educational programs, and operates premier facilities by involving universities, governments and the private sector for the benefit of humanity. USRA is an association with 121 university members. It engages the broader university community, employs in-house scientific talent, and offers innovative research, development, and project management expertise.

Founded in 1969, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the U.S. Government, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is a nonprofit corporation chartered to advance space-related science, technology, and engineering. More information about USRA is available at www.usra.edu.

About USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Sciences (RIACS) 
USRA's Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) was founded in 1983 as an independent research institute. Since its inception, RIACS has conducted research on artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and human-computer interfaces (HCI) for aerospace related use cases; and has a 40+ year history of major achievements in collaboration with NASA. RIACS operates a GenAI Lab for Science & Engineering, which engages academia, industry and government to advance GenAI solutions for the benefit of humanity.

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About BCG X AI Science Institute
BCG X is the tech build and design unit of BCG.

Turbocharging BCG's deep industry and functional expertise, BCG X brings together advanced tech knowledge and ambitious entrepreneurship to help organizations enable innovation at scale.

With nearly 3,000 technologists, scientists, programmers, engineers, and human-centered designers located across 80+ cities, BCG X builds and designs platforms and software to address the world's most important challenges and opportunities.

Teaming across our practices, and in close collaboration with our clients, our end-to-end global team unlocks new possibilities. Together we're creating the bold and disruptive products, services, and businesses of tomorrow.

About Boston Consulting Group
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SOURCE Universities Space Research Association