Interoperable infrastructure for flood monitoring: sensor web, grid & cloud

The paper presents an in ternational multi-disci- plinary initiative, a Namibia SensorWeb Pilot Project, that was created as a testbed for evaluati ng and prototyping key technolo- gies for rapid acquisition and d istribution of data products for decision support systems to monitor fl oods. Those key technologies include SensorWebs, Grids and Computation Clouds. This pilot project aims at developin g an operational trans-boundary fl ood management decision support s ystem for the Southern African region to provide useful fl ood and water-borne disease forecasting tools for local decisi on makers. This effort in tegrates space-based and ground sensor data along with higher level geospatial data products to enable risk assessment and ultimately risk maps related to fl ood di saster management and water-related disease management. We present an overall architecture of the Pilot along with components and servic es being developed. Addition- ally, case-stu dies and results achieved so far are discussed. The presented work is being carried out within GEO 2009–2011 Work Plan as CEOS WGISS contribution.