The Delaware Environmental Observing System (DEOS) is a real-time system dedicated to monitoring environmental conditions across the State of Delaware, the near-shore coastal waters and the Delaware Bay, and adjacent regions of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It is primarily a tool for decision makers involved in emergency management, transportation, agriculture, and environmental management. It is a cooperative venture with a number of state and federal agencies participating, as well as the climate offices from Kentucky and Virginia. Hence, many of its tools are designed to be widely adaptable outside the Delmarva area. DEOS consists of three main components:

(1) The DEOS Environmental Monitoring and Observing Network (DEMON) integrates a number of meteorological and hydrological observation sites located throughout the state and surrounding areas. Observations include both meteorological (e.g., wind vector, air temperature, precipitation, humidity, atmospheric pressure, soil moisture and solar radiation) and hydrological variables (e.g., streamflow, water quality and temperature, tidal heights, well levels) with spatially interpolated fields of a number of observed and derived variables.

(2) The DEOS Integrated Visualization and Analysis System (DIVAS) integrates the surface observations from the DEMON with NWS radar estimates of precipitation and satellite observations of cloud cover and surface conditions. Other derived environmental variables (e.g., evapotranspiration rate, apparent temperature) also are generated by the DEOS system. DIVAS uses an ARCGIS Server interface to provide analysis of environmental conditions to a wide variety of users.

(3) DEOS Analysis Systems (DAS) are designed to provide decision support in a variety of environmentally sensitive areas. Planned analysis systems include those based on coastal flooding risk, drought and rainfall monitoring, and streamflow flooding. These systems not only provide information on current conditions, but the system can contact key individuals should anomalous events occur.

DEOS has been funded now for over a year and some of the elements are now in place. This presentation will provide an overview of the current state of our operations and what we have planned.