Development of a Grace-Enhanced Flood Monitoring and Forecasting Tool Using a Five-Day Grace Product and Physics-Based Data Analytics

Project Description

The research group is developing a new 5-day, mascon-based, near real-time GRACE satellite product for enhancing flood early warning and monitoring. Currently, GRACE-TWSA is being used for operational drought monitoring as part of the U.S.  Drought Monitor, but incorporation of GRACE data into flood warning and forecasting has been hampered by the latency in product releases and the coarse spatial resolution. By developing this new 5-day product based on GRACE data alone and not relying on the land surface or geophysical models, they plan to optimize it predicting short-term events globally, such as floods.

They are also working to enhance the technical readiness level of the 5-day GRACE-based flooding monitoring tool through extended product validation, machine learning workflow development, and the development of a web application prototype. These efforts will help accelerate the transition of the product from research to applications.

Project Lead

Alex has black hair and glasses, he is smiling and wearing a green plaid button up shirtAlexander Y. Sun, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Alex Sun is Senior Research Scientist with the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley with a focus on water resources management. His research is focused on applying multi-disciplinary process-based and data-driven approaches to advance the current understanding of climate and environmental processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In particular, he has applied numerical and scientific machine learning tools to assess water quantity and quality in surface/subsurface systems by fusing multiscale data sources. A special focus of many of his recent projects is the development of online risk assessment and predictive analysis tools, helping to improve two-way communication between domain scientists and stakeholders.

 

Additional Collaborators

Bridget ScanlonPhD, Senior Research Scientist, The University of Texas at Austin

Himanshu Save, PhD, Research Engineer/Scientist Associate, The University of Texas at Austin