My track record and
my experience and expertise is primarily in flooding
and how to use Earth observation and modeling.
Computer models, can be machine learning or numerical modeling, to predict
and also help to better map floods
and give this information to a number of organizations
during a disaster so they can help better respond.
And also then become more resilient, use that same information
how to construct or increase societal resilience.
My company, and also for research projects,
I build a lot of these flood models around the world.
And we have a very strong focus in Africa, where we help communities,
better understand their rivers--can be lakes--but
mostly rivers. So we go around the world and essentially build bespoke models.
Typically Earth observation provides a lot of information
on flooded area or extent, but not very often on water level.
So we use the ICESat-2 water level product, ATL-13,
because it gives us an acceptable level of accuracy and at the right
footprint resolution that we can actually get this over a number of rivers.
And we have one particular river we’re interested in Malawi,
where we also have another project where we get local observers
to tell us the water level on the rivers read off staff gauges.
So basically rulers placed in rivers.
So in a number of days we get some readings from people,
and then we want to see if those readings make sense.
It's like a sanity check.
So we use ICESat-2 over some of these river locations.
We eventually want to get better early warning systems.
So get better models that can predict floods
and water level is the determining factor to describe, okay,
when the water moves out of the channel and creates flooding.
So that's why this water level observation is so important.
With the early adopter programs, you actually get early access to that,
to such data.
So you don't have to wait for a long time until the data gets released.
You can actually start with the mission, but also it's very targeted to users.
So it enables someone like me, more scientific, to work with an end
user community that actually should then also be using the ICESat-2 data.
You know, in terms of flooding, I think there's no time to waste.
I think we need to get ready for really building
better models that can better predict floods.
So when it comes to these sensitive data, and when the mission is making
those data available, I think you want to have it as early as possible.