NASA's Disaster Program has selected seven innovative projects designed to leverage Earth observation data to help communities better understand, prepare for, and recover from disasters and extreme events. Funded by NASA's “Space and Earth Science Research Opportunities,” these projects will benefit from two years of research and development to address critical challenges in disaster risk management.
These selected projects constitute a diverse portfolio of approaches, risks and partnerships spanning multiple sectors and disciplines. Initiatives range from collaborations with power companies to strengthen the resilience of power grids to severe storms and solar events, to partnerships with insurance companies to better assess climate risks, to work with transportation planners to protect critical infrastructure. By collaborating with emergency managers, government agencies and private stakeholders, these projects will translate cutting-edge research into practical tools for disaster preparedness, early warning and recovery. Research teams are taking a variety of approaches, from improving hazard monitoring systems to developing adaptation strategies, while addressing different types of risks like floods, fires, severe storms, activity volcanic and seismic events.
These projects address pressing issues in disaster management, including infrastructure resilience, composite and cascading risks, and the increase in extreme events. They emphasize the integration of physical and social sciences to better understand the vulnerability of communities while developing new methods of preparedness and recovery from the impacts of disasters. These initiatives will benefit communities across the United States, from Alaska to Florida and California, and internationally through partnerships with organizations such as the American Red Cross and agencies in the Dominican Republic.
NASA's Disaster Program will integrate these projects into its “From Disasters to Action” science project portfolio, which includes scalable tools and solutions to support disaster risk reduction and community resilience at scale. worldwide. Through this work, NASA reaffirms its commitment to using observations of Earth from space to protect lives and livelihoods from the impacts of disasters and extreme events.
Projects and their main managers
Using remote sensing data to improve power grid resilience to tropical cyclones
Karthik Balaguru (Battelle Memorial Institute)
Anticipation in disaster management: transforming preparedness through dynamic scenario planning
Erin Coughlan de Perez (Tufts University School of Medicine)
Local projections of multi-hazard risks linked to hurricanes and transport in the face of climate change
Avantika Gori (Rice University)
GEDI-Resilience Navigator: guiding resilience by modeling the economic and social impacts of climatic and seismic hazards
Charles Huyck (ImageCat, Inc.)
Strengthening the resilience of the electricity network through multi-hazard analyzes and dynamic responses
Ryan McGranaghan (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
VolcSARvatory: InSAR geodesy for volcano monitoring
Franz Meyer (University of Alaska, Fairbanks)
Climatological analysis and detection of severe storm risk trends in Europe and North America
Benjamin Scarino (NASA Langley Research Center)
It is undeniable that the integration of space technology into disaster management represents a significant advancement. By combining precise science with pragmatic approaches, NASA projects could shape new standards in community resilience. The idea that better preparedness can come from careful analysis of social and physical vulnerabilities is essential in a world where extreme events are becoming more frequent. It could also inspire other organizations to engage in similar initiatives, strengthening our collective capacity to respond to future crises.
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