As rainfall is increasingly scarce in East Africa, existing groundwater supplies become the main source of water for people, livestock and agriculture. Maintaining access to this life-sustaining resource requires an extensive network of wells and pumps. Earth observations from NASA satellites can indicate that a drought might be on the way – and now, communities can use that information to prepare
Evan Thomas (AeroEngr BS'06, MS'06, PhD'09), a former NASA engineer now at the University of Colorado Boulder with appointments in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is the lead of the Drought Resilience Impact Platform (DRIP), an international water security partnership of nonprofits, government and research institutions, and principal investigator of the NASA-funded project to incorporate satellite data into DRIP’s efforts.