Progress of previous servir-2 project: this proposal builds on a servir project (2016 2019) being led by PI LEE titled building lasting capacity for water management in vulnerable deltas of…

The University of Houston System was awarded a $661,443 grant by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to continue a SERVIR-Mekong project focused on developing water management tools and services for the lower Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia. This builds on the previous SERVIR-2 project led by the University that developed real-time virtual stream gauging, hydrologic modeling, and forecasting capabilities for the Mekong region. The new grant will fund the development of operational systems for flood forecasting, reservoir monitoring, land subsidence monitoring, and optimized reservoir operations, all leveraging satellite data and modeling. These tools and services will be co-developed with the SERVIR-Mekong hub and provided to stakeholder agencies in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The project does not have a set-aside designation.

Progress of previous servir-2 project: this proposal builds on a servir project (2016 2019) being led by PI LEE titled building lasting capacity for water management in vulnerable deltas of indochina which has already made significant progress in developing real-world tools for servir-mekong, reaching high arls. These are: (1) operational virtual gauging system using jason-2/3 altimetry adopted by servir-mekong (https://vrsg-servir.adpc.net/, select virtual stream gauge ) for regional mekong applications and servir SCO (https://tethys.servirglobal.net/apps/altex/) for global applications (2) hydrologic model (VIC)-aided altimetry-based daily river level forecasting system for mekong river, particularly suited for downstream regions of the tonle SAP lake in cambodia and mekong delta in vietnam (chang ET AL., 2019) (3) operational seasonal (up to 6 months) forecast of stream flow based on north american multi-model ensemble (nmme) global climate model (GCM) outputs with SWAT hydrologic model (http://depts.washington.EDU/saswe/datavis_timeseries.html, select seasonal forecast ) (4) operational stream flow nowcast and forecast (15-day) for mekong mainstem (up to kampong cham) using VIC hydrologic model and NOAA global forecasting system (GFS) numerical weather prediction (NWP) forcings (http://depts.washington.EDU/saswe/datavis_timeseries.html, select mekong ) (sikder & hossain, 2018) (5) operational DAM monitoring and outflow prediction system (http://forecasting.vaci.ORG.VN) now in service with nawapi of vietnam (hossain ET AL., 2019). Our previous capacity building efforts have revealed that a win-win strategy can be taken for both of the scientific research and end user communities, so that the servir motto space to village can be expanded to space (supply) to village (demand & supply), then back to space (demand) . Project objectives: we propose to continue building new and improved services to be CO-developed with servir-mekong hub based on identified stakeholders urgent and real needs in order to provide missing pieces of information on the real-time availability of water for entire lower mekong and its inhabitants. These are: (1) operational VIC-altimetry-based flood forecasting system using jason-3 & sentinel-3 altimetry and surface water and ocean topography (swot) data at sub-daily scale with NOAA GFS precipitation forecast for mekong river including the mekong delta (stakeholders: nchmf of vietnam and mowram of cambodia) (2) operational real-time reservoir monitoring system for all dams in mekong basin using satellite precipitation (GPM), reservoir storage derived from optical (landsat, modis, sentinel-2), synthetic aperture radar (SAR) (sentinel-1, alos-2, nasaisro SAR: nisar) and swot data, and VIC-derived inflow (stakeholders: DHM of LAO PDR, nawapi of vietnam, mowram of cambodia) (3) operational land subsidence monitoring system over the deltas and their major coastal cities using persistent scatterer interferometric SAR (psinsar) and multi-baseline psinsar (MB-psinsar) techniques with SAR images from sentinel-1, alos-2, and nisar missions (stakeholder: vigmr of vietnam) (4) operational reservoir operations using NOAA GFS precipitation forecast to maximize hydropower and flood control by synthesizing (1), (2) and turbine data (stakeholders: LAO PDR and mowram of cambodia) in all cases, we will use our built platform of webs, cloud services, and mobile phone apps for various applications, and contextualize them for lower mekong inhabitants via servir-mekong hub, following the success story of the irrigation advisory service via cellphones for hundreds of thousands of farmers in pakistan (https://earthobservatory.NASA.GOV/images/92903/smart-phones-bringsmart- irrigation). Each of our proposed tools (or services) will be running in servir-mekong infrastructure as back up and will be converted into services for stakeholder agencies or individuals