A team of scientists from the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Ukrainian Physics and Technology Institute of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” and Hydrometerological Service will apply their knowledge, experience and long-term data sets to accomplish this proposal in two years.
Ukrainian Team Description. The Ukrainian team is from the Physic and Technology Institute of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”. The group has expertise in the following areas: system analysis, intelligent computations, mathematical modeling of complex processes and systems, high-performance computing and Grids, distance learning. The group posses a working experience in participating in both international and national projects and initiatives. In particular, the group leads the project “Grid Technologies for Multi-Source Data Integration” (no. 4928, 2008-2010) jointly supported by the Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine (STCU) and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU). The project aims the development of new methods for heterogeneous data fusion and development of Grid technologies for their implementation and visualization of results of data processing. The developed method will be implemented as applied Grid-services for agricultural resources and natural disasters monitoring in the interests of security and sustainable development of Ukraine. We are leading the project on “Creation of Grid-service of floods mapping by satellite and model data (and its optimization according to requirements of virtual organization «ESR-VO» European EGEE project)” from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 2007, we successfully completed the STCU-NASU project “Grid technologies for environmental monitoring using satellite data” (2005-2007). Within this project, a basic computational Grid infrastructure was developed. Within the infrastructure, applied problems were solved in different areas, namely in space weather, hydro-meteorology processes monitoring, flood monitoring using microwave satellite data. We extensively collaborate with the EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) and EGI (European Grid Initiatives) projects within Earth Science Research Virtual Organization (ESR-VO). Students from the group have won NASU Award for Young Scientists for the neural network methods and application services for satellite data processing.

US team description. The USA team has excellent knowledge and working experience with processing and archiving the 30-year remote sensing data from NOAA operational satellites, development of satellite-based land parameters and using them for monitoring the environment, socioeconomic activities and climate change/variation analysis and modeling. The Ukrainian team has excellent working knowledge and experience with global and regional in situ data collection, archiving, processing, statistical analysis and interpretation. Besides, a very comprehensive knowledge of the global climate models, their advantages, disadvantages and limitations in applications are very important for the success of this project.
Collaborative background between US and Ukrainian teams. The NOAA/NESDIS/STAR has been successfully collaborated with the Ukrainian teams in the last few years. A team of NOAA scientists have met with Prof. Nataliia Kussul, Ukrainian PI, on several occasions and recently, at the GEO-Ukraine Conferences (June, 2008, Kyiv, Ukraine; June 2009, Advanced Research Workshop “Using Satellite and In situ Data to Improve Sustainability”, Kyiv Ukraine; August 2009 “Flood/Disease SensorWeb Technical Interchange Workshop” Bonn, Germany).