Participation of the NASA Applied Sciences: Disasters Program within the United States Coast Guard Sector Houston's Hurricane Area Exercises

The NASA Applied Sciences: Disaster’s Program is a joint effort between multiple NASA centers to use their expertise to present support to responding agencies of natural disasters. These expertise areas can range from optical remote sensing platforms to synthetic aperture radar systems to modeling of hazards that may come during or after a disaster. The NASA Applied Sciences Disaster’s Program attempts to provide their expertise and resources to a range of international, federal and state agencies. The Disasters Program began working with the United States Coast Guard Sector Houston, after attending their HURREX or Hurricane Exercise in February 2016. This HURREX provided an opportunity for both groups to get more familiar with each agency’s missions and how NADP can help support the USCG in a time of response whether it be to natural or environmental disasters.

An easily to configure web-viewer was developed as a prototype to provide the USCG Sector Houston with access to datasets provided by the Disasters Program. A second, smaller HURREX provided the opportunity to evaluate some initial datasets for GOES, MODIS, VIIRs and Landsat. Archived MODIS Flood maps, archived synthetic aperture radar data (SAR) imagery from Hurricane Isaac (2012), and archived high resolution commercial imagery from Hurricane Rita (2008), were showcased data that can be available when a storm hits. NASA data was served to the web-viewer via a web mapping service (WMS), which also allowed for ease of access to additional WMS platforms. The two agencies used 2016 Hurricane Season as an opportunity to continue developing the web viewer and assessment of NASA assets in their disaster response operations.