Network Analysis of the NASA Earth Science Disasters Program

The NASA Disasters Program promotes ongoing partnerships with the global use of Earth observation data to improve disaster resilience and risk reduction. The Disasters Program is spread across multiple NASA centers and works with many stakeholders both domestically and internationally to accomplish this mission. To optimize the coordination and collaboration efforts of the NASA Disasters Program, their funded projects, as well as their stakeholder community, it is necessary to visualize and analyze these complex relationships. Through a network analysis of different variables related to the Disasters Program, their funded projects, and their stakeholder community, a visualization of the program’s internal and external networks was generated.

The collected information and network visualizations were then used to create an interactive web application using ArcGIS Insights. The web application is hosted on the NASA Disaster Portal and is available to all Disasters Program members. Disasters Program management can use this interactive tool to examine existing connections between Disasters Program personnel, project members, and stakeholders across all affiliated institutions. Additionally, this tool can highlight areas of potential collaboration between Disasters Program projects and their stakeholders or end-user community.