Predicting Changes in the Surface Water Budget and Inundation at NASA Centers from Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events

NASA scientists are working to discover the nature of hazards and potential water budgets of urbanized ecosystem related to climate change. With $32 billion of constructed assets and about 60,000 employees, contractors, and partners, NASA’s exposure to weather and climate hazards is enormous. Its facilities include laboratories, launch sites, airfields, wind tunnels, data centers, and other structures that collectively occupy about 330 square miles, much of it also habitat for threatened and endangered species. Coastal storms and hurricanes are a serious threat to several NASA research and launch facilities. Drawing on the research under the CASI Phase 2 (CASI2) focus on surface water management and ecosystem impacts, this presentation will highlight recent mapping results for flooding inundation patterns of NASA Center facilities in the wake of extreme precipitation events and intense tropical storms of the past 10 years. Our NASA Center partners each have digital GIS spatial layers for vulnerable coastlines, inland water bodies, and wetlands that can provide the basemaps for post-flood damage analysis. In their roles as natural resource management specialists at Michoud/Stennis, Johnson, Kennedy Space Centers, these NASA facilities staff also represent millions of stakeholders living in the large surrounding metropolitan areas of Houston, New Orleans, and Orlando at risk for future flooding.