NASA Water-Cycle Solutions Networks and Community of Practice Approaches to enhance Decision-making
Abstract
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has created the Asian Water Cycle Initiative regional network for South Asia and NASA has launched two networks to enhance the rapid transitioning of scientific achievements and NASA technology into operational use. All three networks meet a new type of scientific challenge by providing strong linkage among the scientific communities, the space agencies, and decision makers. We focus here on the two NASA-sponsored networks that carry out complementary approaches: WaterNet focused on large-scale national/international collaborations; North Olympic Peninsula Solution Network developed a local proof of concept project first, then began integration and collaboration at progressively larger scales, culminating with a national-level discourse via the National Association of Resource, Conservation and Development councils (NARC&DC). The ultimate goals of both groups were to bring NASA Science and Technology products to organizations/groups to improve decision making and to create collaborations and networks that would extend beyond the parent groups and expand and continue to be sustainable, after the original projects were completed. This paper provides a summary of lessons learned. The primary objective of the NOPSN is to bring NASA science and technology tools to watershed managers to improve the scientific basis of decision making in NASA national application areas of water management, agricultural efficiency, and ecological forecasting. To achieve this objective, the NOPSN team first developed and implemented a local proof-of-concept project for the Dungeness River, Washington, to improve water forecasting. The team then developed local and regional collaborations with water resource managers, stakeholder groups, and local, state, and federal agencies to identify environmental issues, challenges, and needs that could be addressed with NASA technology. Finally,through its partnership with NARC&D, it provided the NOPSN team extended the Solutions Network concept nationally. The collaboration with the NARC&DC represented a unique aspect of NOPSN project, because it provided access to 375 member RC&D Councils throughout the United States. WaterNet created a network of scientists who develop products with NASA data and which include decision support systems, such as the California Nevada River Forecasting Center (flood forecasting), the Salt River Project (water supply for Phoenix, Arizona), the EPA Chesapeake Bay watershed water pollution model, the Drought Monitoring Center for Southeastern Europe (DMCSEE), and the Integrated Global Water Cycle Observations (IGWCO) community and water Societal Benefit Area within the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) for facilitating practical pilot projects. The experience of WaterNet’s work is that rapid transitioning of remote sensing to operational decision support can be impeded or fostered by infrastructure and intermediary steps.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFMIN34A..08P
- Keywords:
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- 1855 HYDROLOGY / Remote sensing;
- 1880 HYDROLOGY / Water management;
- 1970 INFORMATICS / Semantic web and semantic integration;
- 6309 POLICY SCIENCES / Decision making under uncertainty