Floods are the deadliest and most costly natural hazard worldwide, so it is important to obtain highly reliable information about global flooding events. This project aims to integrate flood inundation information from multiple sources into the DisasterAWARE® (All-hazard Warnings, Analysis, and Risk Evaluation) platform, providing...
The NASA Disasters Program sponsors application science to support disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery through a series of grants and partnerships funded by the NASA Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) program. The current portfolio of projects from the 2019 ROSES A.37 solicitation covers a broad swath of hazard and disaster research, from tsunami and landslide forecasting to volcanic ash and wildfire smoke plume tracking. It represents the cutting edge of applied disasters research. The program’s research efforts aim to assemble scientifically-defensible studies on disaster risk management, demonstrate the applications of NASA Earth-observing data for studying disasters, and mature the technologies and techniques developed from these projects to operational use.
Projects
Principal Investigator
Margaret T Glasscoe
Principal Investigator
Tyler Pantle
Capacity Building Type
DEVELOP
Kansas City Disasters II (Fall 2022)
Team: Nora Carmody (Project Lead), Dain Kim, Kameron Lloyd, Ruby Nagelberg
Summary: In pluvial flood events, stormwater runoff can pollute ground and surface water, posing a threat long after the rain has ceased. In Wyandotte County, Kansas, this contamination...
Principal Investigator
Tyler Pantle
Capacity Building Type
DEVELOP
Kansas City Disasters (Summer 2022)
Team: M. René Castillo, Hadwynne Gross, Eric Sjöstedt, Raychell Velez
Summary: Pluvial flooding, over-saturated ground, and poor drainage systems disproportionately impact historically disinvested neighborhoods during extreme rainfall events independently of overflowing water bodies. These communities are impacted by physical and...
Principal Investigator
Kyle Hilburn
Over the past decade, increasing wildfire frequency and intensity in the United States has led to several devastating wildfire seasons. The United States’ fire-prone landscape is more densely settled and developed than in previous years, resulting in steeply rising fire-suppression costs. The Weather Research Forecasting...
Principal Investigator
Nickolay Krotkov
Volcanic ash clouds pose a great danger to air traffic safety, leading to flight cancellations and creating a ripple effect on the airline industry’s economy. Real time satellite observations can provide crucial information for re-routing air traffic around the hazardous volcanic clouds. Nickolay Krotkov’s A.37 project...
Principal Investigator
Ronald Eguchi
Catastrophe (CAT) models help insurance companies price insurance by using data from natural hazard physical parameters (e.g., ground motion, flood depth, wind speed) to assess risk and probable loss. These models depend on geographic information systems (GIS) databases to characterize building exposure, but in emerging...
Principal Investigator
Francis Monaldo
Francis Monaldo’s A.37 project, “Development and Implementation of Remote Sensing Techniques for Oil Spill Monitoring and Storm Damage Assessment in an Operational Context,” is collaborating with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve the algorithms that identify the United States’ coastal oil spills...
Principal Investigator
Dalia Kirschbaum
Compared to other hazards such as floods and earthquakes, landslides are small, making them more challenging to observe. As a result, there has been no global network for determining when they might occur. Despite their size, landslides are a pervasive hazard – killing thousands of...
Principal Investigator
Sarah Payne
Capacity Building Type
DEVELOP
Georgia Disasters (Fall 2022)
Team: Isabella Chittumuri (Project Lead), Nancee Uniyal, Nathan Tesfayi, Shakirah Rogers
Summary: In September 2017, Hurricane Irma made landfall in southern Georgia, causing severe flooding and widespread destruction. Disaster recovery programs were inaccessible for heirs' property owners due to title difficulties...
Principal Investigator
Eric Fielding
The moments immediately following a disaster are crucial to a swift recovery, yet it can be difficult for first responders to find reliable disaster information with such a tight timeframe. Sang-Ho Yun’s research project aims to provide rapid mapping of disaster damage using synthetic aperture...