LIS-Hydro: Authoritative Source for OCONUS Hydro-Intelligence

U.S. military forces are often tasked to participate in a variety of transboundary water-related
decision-making activities, including humanitarian assistance operations through Department of
State tasking, support of in-country infrastructure development activities that help develop or
improve diplomatic relationships, and support of transboundary water treaty negotiations or
disputes to reduce risk of conflict caused by water security issues. The U.S. intelligence
communities have identified the coordination over shared water resources as an area of
significant concern to U.S. national security (U.S. National Defense Strategy, 2018). Such
transboundary water issues are projected to intensify in the future under increasingly complex
population dynamics, political tensions due to parallel issues, and a changing climate.

A 2017 joint NASA, USACE/RDC, and U.S. Air Force co-sponsored workshop revealed a lack of
sufficient decision support tools and access to timely technical and contextual information
needed to assess and respond to potential water-related threats around the world. The need for
an integrated operational service, with the capacity to combine and synthesize hydrological
modeling, assimilation, forecasting, and visualization capabilities across the U.S. Government,
was highlighted as a key recommendation.

In direct response, a subset of the U.S. Department of Defense, National Intelligence Community,
and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are collaborating on the development of a fully integrated
hydro-modeling and streamflow prediction system (i.e., LIS-Hydro). Completion of the project and
sustainment of the operational capability by Air Force Weather will establish a national asset to
assist federal agencies implement government-wide strategies around water resources (U.S.
Global Water Strategy, 2017). The hydrological products and services will, for the very first time,
establish a routinely available authoritative source of global water intelligence information
supporting war-fighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S.
military, Federal government, and intelligence community. A summary of the interagency scientific collaboration in addressing some of the key gaps and needs identified during the 2017
workshop will be presented.