Satellite Technology for Water Management

Korea Water Resources Corp. (K-Water) is going to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NASA for joint development of satellite technology for water management and water disaster prevention.

Korea Water Resources Corp. (K-Water) is planning to co-develop satellite technology for water management with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States.

K-Water announced on Dec. 18 that it will sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NASA for the joint development of satellite technology for water management and water disaster prevention. The MOU is a follow-up to the U.S.-Korea agrement on space cooperation in 2016. U.S. Ambassador to Korea Harry Harris will sign the MOU on behalf of the U.S. government.

The U.S.-Korea Space Cooperation is an agreement on which the two countries decided to cooperate with each other in the field of space science in 2016. From Korea, K-Water, the Korea Meteorological Administration, and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute participated, while from the U.S., NASA, NOAA, and USGS took part in.

According to the MOU, the two institutions will co-develop Korean version of NASA’s observation system "LIS," which uses global satellites to analyze climate change, water resources, and interaction with the earth surface. The development of Korean LIS is a part of the Ministry of Environment's R&D project and the LIS will be set up by 2020, reflecting the geography and environmental characteristics of Korea.

K-Water plans to develop a “global satellite-based water disaster monitoring and evaluation prediction platform” based on the Korean LIS. This platform is a system that enables global-scale water cycle observation and analysis. It can analyze various water resources information, such as soil moisture and drought index in units of 1 km of the Korean Peninsula and 10 km of Asia. K-Water will use this information to identify the status of major water resources on the Korean peninsula and across Asia and to acquire various information such as water-related disasters like floods and droughts, green tide and red tide detection, and vegetation change observation.

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