IN041-13
LIS-Hydro: Authoritative Source for OCONUS Hydro-Intelligence
Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 04:36
Virtual
Jerry Wegiel1, Sujay V Kumar1, Yeosang Yoon1, Augusto Getirana1, Christa Peters-Lidard1, Ahmad Tavakoly2, Mark Wahl3, John B Eylander4, Shih-Chieh Kao5, Sudershan Gangrade5, Katherine J Evans5, Frank H Ruggiero6, Kimberly McCormack7, Heather K Levin7, Vincent Huening8, Martin Best9 and Sue Chen10, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Vicksburg, United States, (3)US Army Corps of Engineers, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Vicksburg, MS, United States, (4)US Army Corps of Engineers, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Hanover, NH, United States, (5)Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States, (6)US Air Force, AFLCMC/HBAW, Hanscom AFB, MA, United States, (7)National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Office of Geomatics, St. Louis, MO, United States, (8)National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Office of Geomatics, St. Louis, MO, United States, (9)Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom, (10)Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, CA, United States
Abstract:
U.S. military forces are often tasked to participate in a variety of transboundary water-related decision-making activities, including humanitarian assistance operations through Department of State tasking, support of in-country infrastructure development activities that help develop or improve diplomatic relationships, and support of transboundary water treaty negotiations or disputes to reduce risk of conflict caused by water security issues. The U.S. intelligence communities have identified the coordination over shared water resources as an area of significant concern to U.S. national security (U.S. National Defense Strategy, 2018). Such transboundary water issues are projected to intensify in the future under increasingly complex population dynamics, political tensions due to parallel issues, and a changing climate.
A 2017 joint NASA, USACE/RDC, and U.S. Air Force co-sponsored workshop revealed a lack of sufficient decision support tools and access to timely technical and contextual information needed to assess and respond to potential water-related threats around the world. The need for an integrated operational service, with the capacity to combine and synthesize hydrological modeling, assimilation, forecasting, and visualization capabilities across the U.S. Government, was highlighted as a key recommendation.
In direct response, a subset of the U.S. Department of Defense, National Intelligence Community, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are collaborating on the development of a fully integrated hydro-modeling and streamflow prediction system (i.e., LIS-Hydro). Completion of the project and sustainment of the operational capability by Air Force Weather will establish a national asset to assist federal agencies implement government-wide strategies around water resources (U.S. Global Water Strategy, 2017). The hydrological products and services will, for the very first time, establish a routinely available authoritative source of global water intelligence information supporting war-fighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, Federal government, and intelligence community. A summary of the interagency scientific collaboration in addressing some of the key gaps and needs identified during the 2017 workshop will be presented.
