Realizing NASA's Goal of Societal Benefits From Earth Observations in Mesoamerica Through the SERVIR Project

One of the goals of NASA's Applied Sciences Program is to manifest societal benefits from the vast store of Earth Observations through partnerships with public, private and academic organizations. The SERVIR project represents an early success toward this goal. By combining Earth Observations from NASA missions, results from environmental models and decision support tools from its partners the SERVIR project has produced an integrated systems solution that is yielding societal benefits for the region of Mesoamerica. The architecture of the SERVIR system consists of an operational facility in Panama with regional nodes in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize plus a Rapid Prototyping Center (RPC), located in Huntsville, Alabama. The RPC, funded by NASA's Applied Sciences Division, and developed by the Information Technology and Systems Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, produces scientifically strong decision support products and applications. When mature, the products and applications migrate to the operational center in Panama. There, they are available to environmental ministers and decision makers in Mesoamerica. In June 2004, the SERVIR project was contacted by the environmental ministry of El Salvador, which urgently requested remote sensing imagery of the location, direction, and extent of a HAB event off the coast of El Salvador and Guatemala. Using MODIS data the SERVIR team developed a value added product that predicts the location, direction, and extent of HABs. The products are produced twice daily and are used by the El Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments to alert their tourism and fishing industries of potential red tide events. This has enabled these countries to save millions of dollars for their industries as well as improve the health of harvested fish. In the area of short term weather forecasting the SERVIR team, in collaboration with the NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SpoRT) Center, generates 24 hour-forecasts twice daily utilizing the Weather Research and Forecast Model (WRF). Originally aimed at forecasts for the United States, the SPoRT team extended their work to cover the Mesoamerican region. Following testing at the RPC the system was installed in Panama and is currently producing forecasts that are used by tour guides, boat captains on river and ocean fishing tours, and cruise ship captains. This capability fits perfectly with NASA's goals since an existing project was modified, at minimal cost, to provide societal benefits to the population of a different geographic region. On June 30, 2006 several new applications matured and the inventory of decision support products was significantly expanded. As a result the SERVIR website was reorganized to reflect the changes. The degree of change was sufficient for the developers to designate it as a new release of SERVIR. The applications include a Real-Time Image Viewer, a customized version of NASA World Wind for Mesoamerica known as SERVIR- VIZ (developed by IAGT) and the SERVIR Data Portal (developed by the Water Center of the Humid Tropics Latin America and the Caribbean). The success of the SERVIR project is reflected by its choice by NASA as the decision support system for the Ecological Forecasting National Application. The SERVIR model is also under consideration for other regions of the globe. Potential areas for development are Africa, South America and the Caribbean.