1. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Sarva Pulla
SERVIR Science Coordination Office
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Side Event: and the Harmonization of GEO Water Activities

2. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Mission
Mission
To help developing countries use information provided by Earth observing satellites and geospatial technologies for managing climate-sensitive issues such as disasters, agriculture, water, and ecosystems and land use.
We empower decision-makers with tools, products, and services to act locally on climate-sensitive issues such as disasters, agriculture, water, and ecosystems and land use.
SERVIR is improving awareness, increasing access to information, and supporting analysis to help people in Africa, Hindu Kush-Himalaya, Lower Mekong, and Mesoamerica manage challenges in the areas of food security, water resources, land use change, and natural disasters. With activities in more than 45 countries and counting, SERVIR has already developed over 70 custom tools, collaborated with over 250 institutions, and trained more than 3000 individuals, improving the capacity to develop local solutions.

3. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Geographical Scope
Methodology
Leverage the capabilities of Free and Open Source Software to bridge the gap between decision makers and scientists
Datasets
Sentinel Datasets*, Landsat, IMERG, SMAP, MODIS, GRACE Tellus
GLDAS, NCEP
NMME
This presentation will focus on the applications that were developed by SERVIR for the African continent
* Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data ( ), processed by Eastern and Southern Africa.

4. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Tethys Platform
Tethys is a platform that can be used to develop and host engaging, interactive water resources web applications or web apps. It includes a suite of free and open source software (FOSS) that has been carefully selected to address the unique development needs of water resources web apps. Tethys web apps are developed using a Python software development kit (SDK) which includes programmatic links to each software component. Tethys Platform is powered by the Django Python web framework giving it a solid web foundation with excellent security and performance.
Tethys Platform provides a suite of free and open source software. Included in the Software Suite is PostgreSQL with the PostGIS extension for spatial database storage, GeoServer for spatial data publishing, and 52 North WPS for geoprocessing. Tethys also provides Gizmos for inserting OpenLayers and Google Maps for interactive spatial data visualizations in your web apps. The Software Suite also includes HTCondor for managing distributed computing resources and scheduling computing jobs.
you can use all of the Python modules that you are accustomed to using in your scientific Python scripts to power your web apps.

5. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
SERVIR GLOBAL Tethys Portal
Tethys Platform includes a modern web portal built on Django that is used to host web apps called Tethys Portal. It provides the core website functionality that is often taken for granted in modern web applications including a user account system with with a password reset mechanism for forgotten passwords. It provides an administrator backend that can be used to manage user accounts, permissions, link to elements of the software suite, and customize the instance.
The portal also includes landing page that can be used to showcase the capabilities of the Tethys Platform instance and an app library page that serves as the access point for installed apps. The homepage and theme of Tethys Portal are customizable allowing organizations to re-brand it to meet the their needs.
Features include: Administrator Pages, Customize the portal branding, Social Authentication, Developer Tools, App feedback.

6. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
GRACE Viewer – Regional Interface
The GRACE twin satellites, launched 17 March 2002, are making detailed measurements of Earth's gravity field changes and revolutionizing investigations about Earth's water reservoirs over land, ice and oceans, as well as earthquakes and crustal deformations. The two GRACE satellites have completed more than 13 years of continuous measurements!
GRACE TELLUS provides user-friendly Level-3 data grids of monthly surface mass changes, with most geophysical corrections applied, to analyze changes in the mass of the Earth's hydrologic, cryospheric, and oceanographic components.

7. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
GRACE Viewer – Global Interface

8. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
RHEAS Viewer – VIC Interface
The Regional Hydrologic Extremes Assessment System (RHEAS) is a modular hydrologic modeling framework that has been developed at JPL. At the core of the system lies a hydrologic model that can be run both in nowcasting (i.e. estimation of the current time period) and forecasting (i.e. estimation for future time periods) modes. The nowcasting simulations are constrained by assimilating a suite of Earth Science satellite observations, resulting in optimal estimates of directly and indirectly observed water variables. The latter nowcast estimates can then be used to initialize the 30- to 180-day forecasts. Datasets are automatically fetched from various sources (OpenDAP, FTP etc.) and ingested in a spatially-enabled PostGIS database, allowing for easy dissemination of maps and data.
RHEAS is a data assimilation framework that couples a hydrology model with a crop productivity model.
RHEAS Viewer addresses custom visualization and interpretation needs as identified collectively with our SERVIR Hub RCMRD in Nairobi, Kenya.

9. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
RHEAS Viewer – DSSAT Interface
Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) is a software application program that comprises crop simulation models for over 42 crops (as of v4.6). DSSAT is supported by data base management programs for soil, weather, and crop management and experimental data, and by utilities and application programs. The crop simulation models in DSSAT simulate growth, development and yield as a function of the soil-plant-atmosphere dynamics, and they have been used for many applications ranging from on-farm and precision management to regional assessments of the impact of climate variability and climate change.
Crop modeling framework
Unique ensembling approach

10. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Monitoring ephemeral water bodies in West Africa for pastoralists
Pastoralists and farmers in the Sahel region of West Africa depend on the limited water resources available in the form of ephemeral water bodies. Recently, many of these dry water bodies have been drying up throughout the rainy season. Using a database of known ephemeral waterbodies in the Ferlo Region of Senegal, this tool using Google Earth Engine shows if a water body is more than 75% full, less than 25% full or between the two. By using Landsat as the image source, users in Senegal can get status updates for these important water bodies and disseminate the information to the pastoralists via public radio and other established channels. 

11. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Plans and Deliverables for
Extensive Training on Application Development
Continued co-development of existing applications
Supporting data processing algorithms to map ephemeral water bodies
Discover our code base on GitHub. Always open to feedback and collaboration!

12. SERVIR Applications to Address Water Challenges in Africa
Plans for cross SBA linkages and SDG support
Links to other SBAs
Food security and sustainable agriculture
Disaster Resilience
Contributions to SDGs
Improve Sustainable Management of Water
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Challenges and Issues:
Data Delivery to potential users
Responding to changing needs of water stakeholders in SERVIR regions

13. Thank You sarva.pulla@nasa.gov https://servirglobal.net