The Center for Rapid Environmental Assessment and Terrain Evaluation (CREATE), is headquartered on the campus of the University of New Mexico. The Center acquires near real-time remotely sensed data from environmental satellites and stores these data within CREATE's computational facilities. CREATE provides rapid assessment of changing environmental conditions specifically in the State of New Mexico and generally across a region ranging from Panama on the south to Canada on the north and from the Pacific to Atlantic Oceans.

The research center develops methods to acquire, process, analyze and deliver environmental data to end users with a goal of reducing data lag times from the current weeks to less than two hours. These data sets will be used to support existing Decision Support Systems in hydrology, meteorology, ecology and climatology as well as providing the research framework and data required to generate the next generation of DSS's using NASA data sets and assets.

CREATE is also used as an educational tool to train the next generation of image processing scientists for work in a range of environmental fields.