A new service for gravity field products and for forecasting and mapping of hydrological extreme events will be developed and implemented between 2015 and 2017 within the Horizon2020 Framework Program for Research and Innovation. Major contributions will be provided by GFZ´s Sections 1.2 “Global Geomonitoring and Gravity Field” and 5.4 “Hydrology”. Overall project lead is by the Astronomical Institute of the University Bern (CH), other contributing partners are the German Aerospace Center (D), University Graz (A), University Luxembourg (LUX), University Hannover (D), CNES (F) and Géode & Cie (F).

The overall objectives of EGSIEM are a) to deliver the best time-variable gravity products for applications in Earth and environmental science research, b) to reduce the latency and to increase the temporal resolution of the gravity and related mass redistribution products, and c) to develop gravity-based indicators for extreme hydrological events and demonstrate their value for flood and drought forecasting and monitoring services. This shall be done at different lead times (several months to near real time) via assimilation into flood forecasting models or in statistical forecasting approaches. An operational test run of at least half a year is foreseen in the frame of DLR’s Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information.  

Primary input to EGSIEM is the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, NASA-DLR, since 2002) and GRACE-FO (Follow-on, NASA-GFZ, due for launch early 2018) satellite mission data which are e.g. provided by GFZ in the frame of the US-D GRACE Science Data Systems. These data will be complemented by satellite altimetry, GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) or SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) derived information.  

Further information on the project background and status can be found here.