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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

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...

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

Dr. Joseph Wilkins

Team Members: Miriam Marlier (University of California, Los Angeles), Claire Schollaert (University of Washington), Diane Garcia-Gonzales (University of California, Los Angeles), Michael Jerret (University of California, Los Angeles), Claire Schollaert (University of California, Los Angeles), Jilhoon Jung (University of North Carolina), Byron Ifediora (North Carolina...

Principal Investigator

Patrick Bixler

Team Members: Dev Niyogi (University of Texas at Austin), Carmen Llanes Pulido (Go Austin, Vamos Austin), Marc Coudert (City of Austin), Sergio Castellanos (University of Texas at Austin), Matt Bartos (University of Texas at Austin), Paola Passalacqua (University of Texas at Austin), Jacqueline Moss (University...

Principal Investigator

Claire Masteller

Team Members: Claire Masteller (Washington University), Jose Constantine (Williams College), Hossein Hosseiny (Washington Univeristy in St. Louis)

Executive Summary: Low-income and minority communities are often vulnerable to frequent flooding due to lack of infrastructure for surface runoff mitigation practices and flood monitoring systems. However, due...

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...