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Last month's issue of EOM contained an overview article by Birk et al. describing how the results of NASA's space-based scientific research is extended for the benefit of society. The NASA Science Mission Directorate, has an objective "to expand and accelerate our use of knowledge, data, and technologies resulting from such research." A focus is to make optimal use of NASA's unique capabilities for global observation, data analysis, Earth science modeling, and basic research results. To this end, NASA collaborates with partners from other Federal agencies, from industry, and from academia to demonstrate the capacity to improve future operational systems. NASA and partnering organizations focus on the following 12 applications: Agricultural Efficiency, Air Quality, Aviation, Carbon Management, Coastal Management, Disaster Management, Ecological Management, Energy Management, Homeland Security, Invasive Species, Public Health, and Water Management.
NASA collaborates with partner organizations working in these national priority areas to help integrate NASA's Earth-Sun system scientific data into their policy and management decision support tools. (see Figure 1) The desired outcome is for NASA's Earth-Sun system products to enhance the partner organizations' decision support capabilities, resulting in visible, real-world results, that the partner organization can adopt or adapt for operational use. To that end, the goal of the Homeland Security program element is to enable beneficial use of NASA Earth-Sun system science research, observations, models, and technologies to enhance decision support capabilities serving homeland security missions.
Figure 1: A "missions" to "models" to "decision support tool" process is depicted to demonstrate the systematic approach to decision tool enhancement of societal benefit. Image courtesy DHS. Click on image to see enlarged.
Major tenets of the Homeland Security Program's goals include the following:
- Develop and evolve a network of partnerships with appropriate homeland security organizations, both internal and external to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
- Identify and assess partners' homeland security responsibilities, plans, and decision support tools and evaluate the capacity of NASA science results to support these partners.
- Validate and verify applications of results with partners, including development of products and prototypes to address partners' requirements.
- With partners, document the value of Earth-Sun system science results in decision support tools and support the transition of science information products from research to operations.
- Communicate results and improved processes and tools to appropriate homeland security communities, committees, and stakeholders.