Dissemination of Global Surface Water Mapping from SAR and Optical Data to Global Stakeholders

Under NASA Solicitation A.37 Earth Science Applications: Disaster Risk Reduction and Response, NASAs Disasters Program is currently funding a set of projects focused on flood forecasting, flood severity estimation, post-event flood mapping, flood depth estimation and resulting flood severity using remote sensing-based flood information derived from SAR and optical imagery. The Disasters Program is funding a new initiative to disseminate the flood products from different sensors to global stakeholders via the Pacific Disaster Centers DisasterAWARE, the NASA Disasters Mapping Portal and potentially other mechanisms. The initiative will also generate an integrated product(s) using ensembled hydrologic models and Earth observation derived flood outputs to stakeholders globally. Currently, PDCs DisasterAWARE platform incorporates Model of Models (MoM) outputs as flood incidents, visually depicting potential floods in the context of population and infrastructure that may become affected. Automated procedures are being developed to categorize MoM outputs as DisasterAWARE hazards, allowing for their dissemination to users along with other flood products that assess potential impacts. PDCs stakeholders include UN, DoD, FEMA and their equivalents around the world. Additionally, the DisasterALERT platform has 2 million users worldwide and is a fully functional and sustained platform used to disseminate alerts and analytical products for 18 different hazard types. Currently, HydroSAR water extent mapping products are not being distributed via DisasterAWARE. Under this effort, HydroSAR products will be distributed as flood hazards and products. This initiative focuses on improving response capacity and use of application outcomes by a broader community. We will leverage collaborations with PDC and NASA funded projects to devise a global flood prediction, detection, and monitoring capability. The result is a new global flood capacity to showcase the analytical products derived from NASA funded projects and make these products available for decision-making by stakeholders around the world. The main flood products to be disseminated are those derived from SAR and optical imagery and integrated Model of Models flood severity outputs.