Automated Mapping of Flood Events in the Mississippi River Basin Utilizing NASA Earth Observations

The Mississippi River Basin is the fourth largest drainage basin in the world, and is susceptible to multi-level flood events caused by heavy precipitation, snow melt, and changes in water table levels. Conducting flood analysis during periods of disaster is a challenging endeavor for NASA's Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center (SPoRT), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the U.S. Geological Survey's Hazards Data Distribution Systems (USGS HDDS) due to heavily-involved research and lack of manpower. During this project, an automated script was generated that performs high-level flood analysis to relieve the workload for end-users. The script incorporated Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) tiles and utilized computer-learning techniques to generate accurate water extent maps. The script referenced the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land-water mask to isolate areas of flood induced waters. These areas were overlaid onto the National Land Cover Database's (NLCD) land cover data, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's LandScan data, and Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) to determine the classification of areas impacted and the population density affected by flooding. The automated algorithm was initially tested on the September 2016 flood event that occurred in Upper Mississippi River Basin, and was then further tested on multiple flood events within the Mississippi River Basin. This script allows end users to create their own flood probability and impact maps for disaster mitigation and recovery efforts

Digital Object Memories for the Internet of Things (DOMe-IoT)

Digital Object Memories (DOMe) comprise hardware and software components, which together provide an open and universal platform for capturing and interacting with the digital information of connected objects- including storage, documentation and provision of information concerning actions an object is or might be involved in. We envisage that connected objects will be enabled to make suggestions and propositions to human users- which implies that an object may have a level of agency. The latter concept is a striking possibility that may change the way that we perceive, interact and relate to objects. The goal of this established workshop series is to twofold: 1.) initiate a conversation concerning the potential for objects to develop agency; and 2.) explore how data that is associated with an object may leverage real-world actions. DOMe-IoT 2012 provides a hybrid interdisciplinary workshop format that will combine traditional presentations and discussion with practice-based experimentation

The IVS data input to ITRF2014

2015ivs..data....1N - GFZ Data Services, Helmoltz Centre, Potsdam, GermanyVery Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is a primary space-geodetic technique for determining precise coordinates on the Earth, for monitoring the variable Earth rotation and orientation with highest precision, and for deriving many other parameters of the Earth system. The International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS, http://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov/) is a service of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The datasets published here are the results of individual Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) sessions in the form of normal equations in SINEX 2.0 format (http://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/Organization/AnalysisCoordinator/SinexFormat/sinex.html, the SINEX 2.0 description is attached as pdf) provided by IVS as the input for the next release of the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRF): ITRF2014. This is a new version of the ITRF2008 release (Bockmann et al., 2009). For each session/ file, the normal equation systems contain elements for the coordinate components of all stations having participated in the respective session as well as for the Earth orientation parameters (x-pole, y-pole, UT1 and its time derivatives plus offset to the IAU2006 precession-nutation components dX, dY (https://www.iau.org/static/resolutions/IAU2006_Resol1.pdf). The terrestrial part is free of datum. The data sets are the result of a weighted combination of the input of several IVS Analysis Centers. The IVS contribution for ITRF2014 is described in Bachmann et al (2015), Schuh and Behrend (2012) provide a general overview on the VLBI method, details on the internal data handling can be found at Behrend (2013)