Water Management Needs

A foundational part of WWAO’s mission is to focus on the needs of water managers, decision makers, stakeholders and end users. We work hand-in-hand with a variety of stakeholders to identify key water priorities in the Western U.S. where NASA’s satellite and remotely-sensed data could deliver a real, meaningful, and lasting impact on water management and decisions.

WWAO conducts systematic Water Needs Assessments across the river basins of the Western U.S. Each Needs Assessment consists of a number of steps:

1. We conduct a Characterization Survey of the river basin to identify key trends, stakeholders and issues.
2. We hold a focused, multi-day Needs Assessment Workshop with stakeholders and end users in the region to identify, understand, and catalog their water needs.
3. We document these needs in the form of Use Cases. These Use Cases capture details of the information gap, context of the decision-making process, specific data needed to improve decision making, relevant stakeholders and end users, and current obstacles to meeting the need.

The Use Cases we compile are published in Needs Assessment Reports and directly feed the projects and solutions that WWAO funds and co-develops with partners.

To date, WWAO has surveyed seven of the eight major river basins in the continental Western U.S. (the region west of the 100th meridian). These assessments cover:

1. Western Water Rapid Needs Assessment - survey of overall Western water needs shortly after WWAO’s launch
2. California
3. Colorado River Basin
4. Columbia River Basin
5. Rio Grande River Basin
6. Missouri River Basin
7. Arkansas-White-Red River Basin

Through these assessments, WWAO has collected a catalog of around 100 detailed Use Cases covering a variety of water topics.

In Fall 2024, WWAO will release its Needs Assessment report for the Arkansas-White-Red River Basin, which is currently under development following a successful Needs Assessment Workshop in Oklahoma City in June 2024. In 2025, WWAO will conduct a Water Needs Assessment in the Great Basin. This will be followed by a Cross-Basin Assessment that will review water trends and needs across all basins that WWAO has studied.

Partnerships are key to WWAO’s work. Through our stakeholder engagement effort, we listen to the needs of the community and bridge the gap between the water management community (decision makers, stakeholders and end-users) and NASA’s scientists, technology, tools, and data. This engagement takes various forms:

• Joint participation in conferences, workshops, working groups and cross-boundary water organizations.
• Stakeholder contributions to WWAO’s Water Needs Assessments (as outlined above).
• Nurturing strategic partnerships via ongoing listening sessions, discussions, and broader engagement on NASA Earth observations.
• Co-development of water projects and solutions that can be adopted into water-management operations.

WWAO is located in Southern California at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in order to facilitate meaningful relationships with water stakeholders in the West and to improve their access to NASA solutions.

Our partners include:

1. The public sector - government and state agencies, regional organizations and entities, and tribal groups.
2. The private / non-profit sectors and under-resourced groups - these groups are engaged primarily through our Water Alliance, but also through our connection to NASA's Indigenous Peoples Initiative. WWAO’s focus on delivering impact and solutions involves looking to a broad array of partners beyond those who are publicly-funded.