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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2022

Okefenokee Water Resources: Using Earth Observations to Assess Hydrologic Changes and Wildfire Risk in the Okefenokee Swamp

The Okefenokee Swamp is a vital ecosystem known for its protection of biodiversity, peatland carbon sinks, and recreational and economic opportunities for local residents. The swamp has experienced several wildfires since the 1990s, and new development along the borders of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR) threatens to alter hydrologic activity and increase fire frequency. NASA DEVELOP partnered with staff at the ONWR to determine the feasibility of using satellite imagery to assess wildfire risk and map changes in vegetation cover. Using data from NASA satellites Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data from the USDA’s Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics Tool (Crop-CASMA), European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-1 C-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (C-SAR), and Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI), the DEVELOP team assessed the relationship between hydrologic change, vegetation cover, and wildfire risk in the swamp. Results showed that the southern portion of ONWR has been burned the most since 1990 and has greater water stability than other areas of the refuge. The team also found that the largest pockets of mature forests remain in the northernmost regions. Soil moisture anomaly readings may serve as an indicator of fire conditions. The team used these results to create a vegetation map, a swamp water visibility time series map, a historical wildfire correlation analysis, and a methodology tutorial. These products will assist the ONWR in making informed management decisions about the future of the Okefenokee Swamp.

Brianne Kendall↗
DOE OSTI2026

Commentary: Our “heatshed” moment is now

We are living through a “heatshed” moment, a critical turning point in which heat must be rapidly addressed to protect health and livelihoods worldwide. The year 2024 was the hottest on record since global records began in 1850, and the past 10 years were the hottest decade in recorded history. Although extreme heat is the top weather-related killer in the United States, affecting livelihoods and economies, cities and nations dedicate more attention and resources to other climate hazards, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires. In this commentary, we argue that heat resilience must be rapidly advanced through heat mitigation, heat management, and heat governance efforts to ensure thriving communities in the face of an overheating world.

Extreme heat↗
DOE OSTI2026

Comparative life cycle assessment of bioenergy in Japan from residual biomass-based wood pellets produced in the US Pacific Northwest

The US Pacific Northwest (PNW) faces an increase in wildfires due to forest overcrowding and climate change, posing significant environmental and public health risks. Traditional methods of managing surplus biomass, including prescribed burning, have increased air pollution and global warming. While in the PNW, residual woody biomass is being treated as waste, Japan’s growing demand for bio-based energy presents an opportunity to export value-added biomass as energy pellets. This study investigates whether producing wood pellets from the residual woody biomass from forest operations and sawmills for electricity generation in Japan is truly environmentally beneficial. Accordingly, we conducted a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of residual pellets vs. coal for electricity generation. The assessment covered feedstock production, pellet processing, transportation, and combustion phases. Our findings indicate that replacing coal-based electricity in Japan with PNW residual pellet-based electricity can lower the Global Warming Potential (GWP) by about 90% for every unit of electricity displaced. Furthermore, the results show that repurposing the otherwise burnt harvest slash residues for pellet production would improve local air quality by reducing PM 2.5 and smog in the PNW. However, substituting coal with residual pellets marginally increased carcinogenic and ecotoxicity-related emissions. Based on these results, we conclude that substituting coal with residual wood pellets for electricity generation, particularly harvest-slash residual pellets, is environmentally beneficial across most impact categories, including the GWP. This research underscores how an export‑oriented pellet industry can help address the environmental challenges within the regional US wood products industry and global renewable energy supply.

Velappan, Hemalatha [Univ. of Washington, Seattle,↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Self-Sustained CPS Design for Reliable Wildfire Monitoring

Continuous monitoring of areas nearby the electric grid is critical for preventing and early detection of devastating wildfires. Existing wildfire monitoring systems are intermittent and oblivious to local ambient risk factors, resulting in poor wildfire awareness. Ambient sensor suites deployed near the gridlines can increase the monitoring granularity and detection accuracy. However, these sensors must address two challenging and competing objectives at the same time. First, they must remain powered for years without manual maintenance due to their remote locations. Second, they must provide and transmit reliable information if and when a wildfire starts. The first objective requires aggressive energy savings and ambient energy harvesting, while the second requires continuous operation of a range of sensors. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first self-sustained cyber-physical system that dynamically co-optimizes the wildfire detection accuracy and active time of sensors. The proposed approach employs reinforcement learning to train a policy that controls the sensor operations as a function of the environment (i.e., current sensor readings), harvested energy, and battery level. Here, the proposed cyber-physical system is evaluated extensively using real-life temperature, wind, and solar energy harvesting datasets and an open-source wildfire simulator. In long-term (5 years) evaluations, the proposed framework achieves 89% uptime, which is 46% higher than a carefully tuned heuristic approach. At the same time, it averages a 2-minute initial response time, which is at least 2.5× faster than the same heuristic approach. Furthermore, the policy network consumes 0.6 mJ per day on the TI CC2652R microcontroller using TensorFlow Lite for Micro, which is negligible compared to the daily sensor suite energy consumption.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

2024 Wildfire Danger Rating Update: Analysis of the Wildfire Danger Rating Instruction for Kirtland Air Force Base.

A study of wildfire danger ratings was conducted by the Meteorological Program using the adjective ratings reported to the Weather Information Management System (WIMS). The focus of this study was to identify the shortcomings of Instruction 13-212 from Kirtland Air Force Base with regards to fire danger rating. The goal was to illustrate the benefits of using data from the Sandia National Labs Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS) to better identify the proper fire danger rating on Kirtland Air Force Base.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2020

Gila Water Resources II: Using Earth Observations to Identify Wildfire Impacts on Hydrologic Functions and Recovery in the Gila National Forest

Wildfires have the potential to cause devastating and long-lasting impacts on ecological systems. In the Gila National Forest (Gila NF), wildfire events have occurred with increasing frequency and severity over recent years. These disturbances, such as the historic Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire (2012) and Silver Fire (2013), have raised concerns over post-fire flooding, debris flows, and vegetation recovery. Understanding connections between burn events and ecological functions is crucial for developing effective land management practices within the Gila NF that ensure conservation of the watershed. The Gila Water Resources II team worked in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) US Forest Service’s (USFS) Gila National Forest and Region 3. This project provided insight into the influence of wildfires on increased flooding events and determined if restoration efforts in the Gila NF are having a beneficial impact on vegetation regeneration. To understand recovery trends and hydrologic impact in the Gila NF between 2000-2019, this project used Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper, Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager, Global Precipitation Measurement Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM precipitation, along with ancillary data from USGS stream gauges and data provided by USDA USFS’s Gila National Forest and Region 3. Based on these data, the team identified burn areas that received restorative treatments and compared Normalized Burn Ratio for different land cover types to better inform land management decisions. Additionally, the team analyzed the relationship between precipitation and streamflow from stream gauges to investigate the impact wildfires have on hydrology within the watershed.

Water Resources↗
DOE OSTI2022

Growing impact of wildfire on western US water supply

Streamflow often increases after fire, but the persistence of this effect and its importance to present and future regional water resources are unclear. This paper addresses these knowledge gaps for the western United States (WUS), where annual forest fire area increased by more than 1,100% during 1984 to 2020. Among 72 forested basins across the WUS that burned between 1984 and 2019, the multibasin mean streamflow was significantly elevated by 0.19 SDs (P < 0.01) for an average of 6 water years postfire, compared to the range of results expected from climate alone. Significance is assessed by comparing prefire and postfire streamflow responses to climate and also to streamflow among 107 control basins that experienced little to no wildfire during the study period. The streamflow response scales with fire extent: among the 29 basins where >20% of forest area burned in a year, streamflow over the first 6 water years postfire increased by a multibasin average of 0.38 SDs, or 30%. Postfire streamflow increases were significant in all four seasons. Historical fire–climate relationships combined with climate model projections suggest that 2021 to 2050 will see repeated years when climate is more fire-conducive than in 2020, the year currently holding the modern record for WUS forest area burned. These findings center on relatively small, minimally managed basins, but our results suggest that burned areas will grow enough over the next 3 decades to enhance streamflow at regional scales. Wildfire is an emerging driver of runoff change that will increasingly alter climate impacts on water supplies and runoff-related risks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2022

Growing Impact of Wildfire on Western US Water Supply

Streamflow often increases after fire, but the persistence of this effect and its importance to present and future regional water resources are unclear. This paper addresses these knowledge gaps for the western United States (WUS), where annual forest fire area increased by more than 1,100% during 1984 to 2020. Among 72 forested basins across the WUS that burned between 1984 and 2019, the multibasin mean streamflow was significantly elevated by 0.19 SDs ( P < 0.01) for an average of 6 water years postfire, compared to the range of results expected from climate alone. Significance is assessed by comparing prefire and postfire streamflow responses to climate and also to streamflow among 107 control basins that experienced little to no wildfire during the study period. The streamflow response scales with fire extent: among the 29 basins where >20% of forest area burned in a year, streamflow over the first 6 water years postfire increased by a multibasin average of 0.38 SDs, or 30%. Postfire streamflow increases were significant in all four seasons. Historical fire–climate relationships combined with climate model projections suggest that 2021 to 2050 will see repeated years when climate is more fire-conducive than in 2020, the year currently holding the modern record for WUS forest area burned. These findings center on relatively small, minimally managed basins, but our results suggest that burned areas will grow enough over the next 3 decades to enhance streamflow at regional scales. Wildfire is an emerging driver of runoff change that will increasingly alter climate impacts on water supplies and runoff-related risks.

wildfire↗
DOE OSTI2020

Karuk Climate Resiliency Plan

Statewide, California is the hottest and driest since modern record keeping has taken place. Among the most urgent of the local dimensions of climate change in Karuk Ancestral Territory is the increased frequency of high-severity fire. The 2016 Karuk Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA) outlines how these influences have created landscape conditions that hold the potential to be devastating in the face of future high-severity fire events. The project followed the format of our CVA and furthers information garnered to accomplish two primary objectives. The Karuk Tribe developed a Climate Adaptation Plan to address established vulnerabilities to Tribal traditional foods and cultural use species, Tribal program infrastructure, and Tribal management authority and political status resulting from changing conditions with a focus on increased frequency of high-intensity wildfire events within the Karuk Ancestral Territory.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessing Drought and Fire Conditions, Trends, and Susceptibility to Inform State Mitigation Efforts and Bolster Monitoring Protocol in North Central Idaho

Escalating severity and frequency of drought and wildfire call for effective and cost-efficient mitigation planning and monitoring protocols. The Palouse ecoregion, an agricultural epicenter in North-central Idaho, is of particular concern as both drought and wildfire present substantial economic threats. The DEVELOP team implemented Earth observation data to assist the Idaho Office of Emergency Management, Idaho Department of Water Resources, and Idaho Department of Lands in updating the state’s Hazard Mitigation Plan by enhancing their drought and fire monitoring capabilities. The team utilized Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), and Aqua and Terra’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), along with ancillary datasets, to assess drought indicators and map hazard susceptibility. The team upgraded the state’s current fire hazard model by updating existing data layers and adding drought indicator data to support partners’ continued assessment of fire hazard conditions. The team observed Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) spikes during the highest fire occurrence and burned area years in the study period: 2015 and 2021. Models from dry, high fire occurrence and burned area year 2015 outperformed models from mesic, low fire occurrence and burned area year 2016. The increased understanding of drought conditions and fire susceptibility in this ecosystem will assist partners in improving land management practices.

Ford Freyberg↗
DOE OSTI2026

TES: Modelling Microbes to Predict Post-Fire Carbon Cycling in the Boreal Forest across Burn Severities (Exploratory Proposal)

Wildfires in boreal ecosystems represent a globally significant ecological process that is expected to be sensitive to changing climate as well as forest management strategies, but is currently insufficiently understood and represented in models. We sought to determine whether linking belowground microbial community composition, size, and activity to aboveground properties of burn severity and plant community composition (upland jack pine and upland spruce) would allow us to better model post-fire soil CO 2 fluxes using the Carbon, Organisms, Rhizosphere and Protection in the Soil Environment (CORPSE) model. We used an integrated modelling experimental approach, with mechanistic laboratory experiments designed to inform models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2004

Harnessing Systems Engineering Methodology in Using Earth Science Research Data for Real Applications

For the last three decades, Earth science remote sensing technologies have been providing an enormous amount of useful data and information serving to broaden our understanding of the home planet as a system. NASA's Earth science program has deployed about 18 complex satellites and is in the process of defining and launching multiple observing systems in this decade. At the same time, the European Community and many other countries such as Russia, France, India, Japan, and China have also significantly contributed to Earth science research. To date, the majority of such efforts have concentrated on expanding our scientific understanding of the multiple nonlinear and chaotic processes of Earth's behavior. In recent years, legislators and stakeholders have put serious pressure on the science community to devote more attention to making use of scientific results for societal benefit. For instance, there are a number of areas such as energy forecasting, aviation safety, agricultural efficiency, disaster management, air quality and public health that can directly take advantage of Earth science results to analyze and predict large scale problems and conditions. This is becoming even more important now that we live in a global economy interconnected via the internet and transportation systems; regional environmental conditions can have far reaching impact across continental boundaries. These factors dictate requirements for global data that can help us assess and control the devastating problems of famine, water resources, wildfires, human health and more. To do this requires a serious, organized, and systematic approach that transfers fundamental research products to the applied sciences domain. This paper presents a systems engineering and management process that can effectively make such transfer of data to the user community. Examples are presented on how the above decision making framework can help in solving critical problems such as the spread of vector borne diseases, forecasts of harmful algal blooms as well as forest fires and wildfires, and the intercontinental transport of dust storms and pollution.

Habib, Shahid↗
DOE OSTI2024

Invasive Plant Species Management Plan for Los Alamos National Laboratory (Rev.3)

Native species are plants and animals that continually occupy a natural range without direct or indirect introduction and/or care by humans. They are adapted to the environmental conditions and processes of the ecosystem in which they reside. A species introduced into a novel ecosystem can either exploit that ecosystem and thrive or be unable to survive in that ecosystem (Hobbs et al. 2006). Alien or non-native species are species that are intentionally or accidentally introduced into a novel ecosystem and are capable of living and propagating within the physical parameters of that ecosystem. Invasive species is a species that is non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and a noxious species are those whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm. The term invasive species is applicable to plants and animals alike; however, this invasive species management plan currently focuses on invasive vegetation. Invasive plant species are usually capable of rapid colonization of disturbed ground, such as after a change in wildfire regime intensity and frequency (Reilly et al. 2020) or anthropogenic ground disturbance (Burke and Grime 1996; Hobbs and Huenneke 1992). Climate change facilitates the spread and establishment of many alien species and creates new opportunities for them to become invasive (Turbelin and Catford 2021). As climate change impacts increase in the coming decades, we may see in an increase in invasive species establishment. See a list of definitions of terms pertinent to this document in Appendix A: Definitions. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) hosts populations of non-native and invasive species all typical of the northern New Mexico region (Martin 2004; NMDA 2020). By implementing an invasive species management plan, LANL will have readily accessible management strategies for invasive species that are found on-site. The benefits of managing invasive species include a decrease in wildland fire risks, an increase in soil productivity, an increase in (productive or beneficial) wildlife habitat, an increase in water quantity and quality, and the restoration of impacted areas (Burke and Grime 1996; Hobbs and Huenneke 1992; D’Antonio and Hobbie 2005; MacDougall et al. 2013; Reilly et al. 2020). The aforementioned benefits from invasive species management directly enable the LANL mission by ensuring compliance requirements are met and site-wide programs, such as the Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Plan, are supported for a mutually beneficial outcome. An example for the LANL site specifically, controlling non-native annual plant species, for example, could reduce the costs associated with stabilizing soils during the stormwater pollution prevention compliance process. Roadway and utility right-of-way areas are another place where an integrated vegetation management strategy would promote low growing perennial plants in a way that is mutually beneficial to habitat and the institution through lowered maintenance costs. There is also an economic benefit to managing invasive species. In one nationwide study, invasive plants had an estimated impact cost of $190.45 billion (Fantel-Lepczyk et al. 2022). Investing in preventative measures and surveillance could help to offset future control and management costs of invasive species that have the potential to become established. The State of New Mexico has developed plant species lists and recommendations through the New Mexico Department of Agriculture’s Noxious Weeds Management Act, Article 7D (NM Statute § 76-7D-4 2021); however, effective invasive species management must rely on local knowledge of the site and region. Los Alamos County (LAC) has already compiled a target invasive plant species list and species-specific management objectives (Martin 2004). Therefore, the New Mexico Noxious Weed List and the LAC invasive plant species list, as well as management objectives from those documents, are integrated into LANL’s invasive plant species management plan.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Update: Wildland Fire Element

As the NASA ESD, Applied Science Program, Associate Program Manager responsible for the agency's Wildland Fire Program portfolio, Vince Ambrosia manages and oversees NASA's participation in developments of Earth Observations capabilities supporting improved wildland fire management. The Wildland Fire Program has been subsumed within the ASP Disaster Program element and focuses on the NASA progress developments of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Global Wildfire Information System, where V. Ambrosia also serves as the GEO-GWIS NASA representative to the international panel. The NASA GWIS developments for the past year are highlighted in the briefing. In addition, other wildland fire-related NASA projects are also highlighted in this presentation, providing a context for the various successful developments and operationalization of Earth Observing systems data by partner entities and organizations involved in fire management.

Vince Ambrosia↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Formalized Reasoning of Operational Volumes for Wildland Fire Fighting

This work is focused on the formalized reasoning of operational volumes as it relates to the current and future technologies developed by NASA to aid in wildfire fighting operations. One such technology is the unmanned aircraft system pilot kit (UASP-kit) developed by the Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) project at NASA, which is used to increase situation awareness for a ground operator in the field. The UASP-kit utilizes operational volumes which represent mission areas and alerting volumes, to alert when another aircraft is within one of these volumes from received ADS-B data. This work is focused on developing a rigorous foundation for the concept of operational volumes for modeling and prototyping operations in such a tool as the UASP-kit. This includes establishing a class of algorithms to detect when an object is in an operational volume, and when an operational volume is intersecting or contained within another. Additionally, this work is focused on providing rigorous proof in an interactive theorem prover that the algorithms work as intended. Scenarios are presented that model current UASP-kit operations and extend past the current capabilities of the technology to modeling more complex scenarios such as mission planning.

Operational Volumes↗
NASA NTRS2022

Using Soil Moisture Information to Better Understand and Predict Wildfire Danger: A Review of Recent Developments and Outstanding Questions

Soil moisture conditions are represented in fire danger rating systems mainly through simple drought indices based on meteorological variables, even though better sources of soil moisture information are increasingly available. This review summarises a growing body of evidence indicating that greater use of in situ, remotely sensed, and modelled soil moisture information in fire danger rating systems could lead to better estimates of dynamic live and dead herbaceous fuel loads, more accurate live and dead fuel moisture predictions, earlier warning of wildfire danger, and better forecasts of wildfire occurrence and size. Potential uses of soil moisture information in existing wildfire danger rating systems include (1) as a supplement or replacement for drought indices, (2) for live and (3) dead fuel moisture modelling, (4) for estimating herbaceous fuel curing, and (5) for estimating fuel loads. We identify key remaining research questions and note the logistical challenge of convincing wildfire professionals of the importance of soil moisture compared with more familiar wildfire danger metrics. While obstacles remain, the path forward is clear. Soil moisture information can and should be used to improve fire danger rating systems and contribute to more effective fire management for the protection of communities and ecosystems worldwide.

fuel properties↗
DOE OSTI2025

Prospects for silvicultural enhancement of fire resistance in mesic westside forests of the Pacific Northwest

Increasing wildfire activity in mesic, temperate Pacific Northwest forests west of the Cascade Range crest has stimulated interest in understanding whether alternative forest management practices could reduce risk of stand-replacing fire. To explore how management can enhance fire resistance in these forests and assess tradeoffs among resistance enhancement, carbon sequestration and storage, and economic returns, we conducted 40-year simulations of stand development with BioSum, a framework for conducting landscape analysis with the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), utilizing a statistically representative and spatially balanced sample of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots. Simulation outcomes under business-as-usual silviculture were contrasted with fire-aware silviculture, and treatment optimization logic was developed and applied to represent landscape-scale outcomes under business-as-usual and fire-focused management scenarios. Simulation results indicate that fire-aware prescriptions and fire-focused management can meaningfully enhance stand- and landscape-scale fire resistance of westside forests under less than extreme fire weather, but at the cost of lower economic returns and reduced net carbon storage and sequestration over the 40-year analysis window. Shifting from business-as-usual regeneration harvests with short rotations to fire-aware, episodic selection harvest improved fire resistance the most, especially in young privately-owned forests, and with only modest tradeoffs in carbon and economic outcomes. While fire-aware treatments generally reduced net present value from forest operations over business-as-usual, most treatments still generated positive net present value and could be implemented without subsidy. Fire-aware prescriptions that removed and utilized non-merchantable harvest residues instead of burning them, via either pile or broadcast burning, partially mitigated carbon emissions associated with fire-aware treatments, with about the same improvement in fire resistance. Given the currently limited institutional and financial capacity to implement fire resistance enhancing treatments at scale, the insights from this analysis may aid managers seeking to elevate fire resistance to prioritize where and how to manage.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗
NASA NTRS2012

Information Systems Coordinate Emergency Management

The rescue crews have been searching for the woman for nearly a week. Hurricane Katrina devastated Hancock County, the southernmost point in Mississippi, and the woman had stayed through the storm in her beach house. There is little hope of finding her alive; the search teams know she is gone because the house is gone. Late at night in the art classroom of the school that is serving as the county s emergency operations center, Craig Harvey is discussing the search with the center s commander. Harvey is the Chief Operating Officer of a unique company called NVision Solutions Inc., based at NASA s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, only a couple of miles away. He and his entire staff have set up a volunteer operation in the art room, supporting the emergency management efforts using technology and capabilities the company developed through its NASA partnerships. As he talks to the commander, Harvey feels an idea taking shape that might lead them to the woman s location. Working with surface elevation data and hydrological principles, Harvey creates a map showing how the floodwaters from the storm would have flowed along the topography of the region around the woman s former home. Using the map, search crews find the woman s body in 15 minutes. Recovering individuals who have been lost is a sad reality of emergency management in the wake of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But the sooner answers can be provided, the sooner a community s overall recovery can take place. When damage is extensive, resources are scattered, and people are in dire need of food, shelter, and medical assistance, the speed and efficiency of emergency operations can be the key to limiting the impact of a disaster and speeding the process of recovery. And a key to quick and effective emergency planning and response is geographic information. With a host of Earth-observing satellites orbiting the globe at all times, NASA generates an unmatched wealth of data about our ever-changing planet. This information can be captured, analyzed, and visualized by geographic information systems (GIS) to produce maps, charts, and other tools that can reveal information essential to a wide variety of applications including emergency management. Knowing precise, real-time information about the size, location, environmental conditions, and resulting damage of an event like a flood or wildfire as well as the location and numbers of emergency responders and other resources contributes directly to the effectiveness of disaster mitigation. The need for such information is also evident when responding to homeland security threats, such as a terrorist attack. Recognizing the value of its geospatial information resources for this and other purposes, in 1998 Stennis and the state of Mississippi partnered to form what became the Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions (EIGS) industry cluster, supporting the growth of remote sensing and GIS-based research and business. As part of EIGS, several companies partnered with NASA through dual use and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. Among those was NVision.

Source record↗