Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) News about Bob
Space-based monitoring of surface water changes for humanitarian, research, and water management applications; includes changes related to floods, droughts, wetlands, shorelines, lakes, and reservoirs.
I founded the Dartmouth Flood Observatory in 1993, which moved to the University of Colorado in 2010. The Observatory conducts space-based monitoring of surface water changes for humanitarian, research, and water management applications. It has acquired and is preserving for public use a digital map record of the Earth’s changing surface water, including changes related to floods, droughts, wetlands, shorelines, lakes, and reservoir. Surface water changes dramatically on a seasonal basis in areas such as monsoonal Asia and Africa and across the Arctic, and from year to year elsewhere during major floods and droughts. We monitor such changes in near real time, so that the resulting information has maximum utility to the disaster response community.
The future of flood mapping: Dartmouth Flood Observatory (4 min)
Education
- PhD: University of Arizona, 1982
- MS: University of Arizona, 1979
- BS: Beloit College, 1975
Awards
- Winner, 2019 PROSE Award for Best Earth Science Book, Association of American Publishers, 2019
- Certificate of Appreciation, NASA, 2010
- Group Achievement Award, NASA, 2007
Example publications
For additional publications, see Robert's Google Scholar profile.
Tellman, B., Sullivan, J. A., Kuhn, C., Albert J. Kettner, Doyle, C. S., Robert Brakenridge, Erickson, T. A., Slayback, D. A. 2021: Satellite imaging reveals increased proportion of population exposed to floods. Nature, 596: 80-86. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03695-w
Restrepo, J. D., Albert J. Kettner, Robert Brakenridge 2020: Monitoring water discharge and floodplain connectivity for the northern Andes utilizing satellite data: A tool for river planning and science-based decision-making. Journal of Hydrology, 586: 124887. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.124887
Robert Brakenridge 2020: Solar system exposure to supernova γ radiation. International Journal of Astrobiology, 20(1): 48-61. DOI: 10.1017/S1473550420000348
Zeng, Z., Gan, Y., Albert J. Kettner, Yang, Q., Zeng, C., Robert Brakenridge, Hong, Y. 2020: Towards high resolution flood monitoring: An integrated methodology using passive microwave brightness temperature and Sentinel synthetic aperture radar imagery. Journal of Hydrology, 582: 124377. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.124377
Guy Schumann, Robert Brakenridge, Albert J. Kettner (he/his), Kashif, R., Niebuhr, E. 2018: Assisting flood disaster response with Earth observation data and products: A critical assessment. Remote Sensing, 10(8): article 1230. DOI: 10.3390/rs10081230
