 I'm wired. There we go. OK. So good morning. Have to be careful not to yell. This sounds really loud from here. How does it sound in the back? Is it OK? All right. I'll try not to get too over the top. Good morning, and thank you for being here. I've learned a couple of things already. We're organized. That's good. We're focused, and not too many academics. I learned a few other things. OK. You also heard about GFP, Global Flood Partnership. I'm going to try and explain to you how you are also a community. But the focus is on the Global Flood risk monitoring. And we're all science-based. And NASA's program on disasters is a science-based that supports many others that are operational, that are mission-oriented, that have very specific deliverables, whether it's a flood forecast, or a stream flow, or a map product, or the private sector that is developing sensors, or data-rich value-added products and services. But we have specific questions that we're all trying to answer, not just about, is it raining? Or is it wet? But what do we really have to be concerned with, the nature of the risk? For many years, we've all been studying flood as a hazard. One of the things that I wanted to convey here is that didn't get us far enough. Understanding the nature of a hazard is key and critical. But people are asking, so what? You might understand the science of the hazard, but I also want to know what the impacts are. Want to know about vulnerabilities and exposure and sustainability. I want to know, when that flood happens, what should I be worried about? And as I told a few people last night, I give credit to this community to be very smart, very clever. And the push is to get us into this area of risk. So it's not just a partnership about flood. It's not just a partnership about flood and agriculture or satellites. But it's really a community to focus us on risk. Now, a few years ago, on a global scale, there was a shift in the discussion of disaster risk reduction. For many years, there was something called a yoga framework. Yoga framework talked about things like floods and said, boy, are they terrible. People who are poor and displaced and are impacted, but floods are just a bad thing. They went for 10 years talking about floods being a bad thing. In 2015, it said, it's about time we actually did something about it. They changed the language or something called the Sendai framework. Sendai framework is important because the US and other countries around the world changed and shifted and said, instead of talking about hazards, we should be talking about something we can actually take action on. Fundamental shift in 2015 was about risk management. We can't manage the hazard. We can manage risk. We can do something about it. So the group on Earth observations, which is satellites and in-situ sensors, it's airborne, it's drones, it's gauges, it's all of the science associated with that, so that we should align ourselves, work together, focus on things. And some of the questions we're talking about here is, what are the most important things about flood that we need to do to address this risk? Is it the flow? Is it some kind of exchange of data? Is it better topographies? Is it better understanding of where cities and villages and towns are and where they can evacuate to or how long they should be out? Or the social and cultural and language barriers that stop people from taking action? There's a number of geo and related what are called community activities. Global flood partnership is actually officially is a community activity. But so is global flood risk, the geo flood. That's you now. And there's others that have aspects for agriculture, Wofas, the forecasting. But this one is about flood risk and the communities to do that. It involves the hydromete community as much as the satellite community as well as the earth and the social science aspects. The non-governmental organizations and the civil society groups, the ones who can really understand what happens at community level. Now one of the other things that's going on right now is a recognition that we don't necessarily know how to best even assess the risk yet alone respond to it. So over the next 10 years, one of the efforts is to find the best practices and the observations and the science to even assess where the risk is. And so one of the things we're gonna try and do the next few days is actually try and take some actions, identify some of those steps that he mentioned to you. What should we work on? Where are those gaps? Where are the priorities? But I do not want to hear you say, oh, we need more data. That's vague. That doesn't get us anywhere. What do we need? Where do we need it? What are the next steps? Let's take 10 years and figure out how are we gonna get there? But this global risk assessment lays out are just some of the things that we need to be thinking about is going from global to national to subnational to local scales. The thinking on the right there, it's the hazard and the exposure and the vulnerability. It's not just that one little slice and we need to be thinking about it. Not just the pure science, but it's that social, the economic, the ecological, the infrastructure. We've had flooding the last few weeks down in Florida, from Hurricane Florence. And one of the things we found out was it wasn't just our usual flood scientists worried about the impacts, but we started speaking to people about the vegetation and the towns and the infrastructure, the energy and the grid, the schools and the communities, the language and the cultures. So all of this is what we need to be thinking about in this context of the new effort. Now there's obviously a more complex structure of all the things that need to feed into some of this. And it does include things, and I can share this with people. We've been trying to think this through. It's a global scale too, because we need partnerships from around the world. A flood that might happen in Indonesia or in Thailand or in North Carolina requires partnerships around the world. The typhoon that's hit Indonesia activated the international charter, so data is coming in from all over the world, and all kinds of people from Luxembourg to Seattle are doing modeling and analysis, and groups from the Netherlands or from Portland, Oregon are bringing in humanitarian aid and relief and disaster efforts. So there's a lot of things that feed into, sorry, that cube. And you are part of that. So there's an opportunity for the next few days. I want you to think about that shift. I'll, I don't know what else I've got up here. Lots of different things, it's background stuff you don't need to hear about. It's supporting Sendai. One of the other things that was up on the list there was about the portal, and somewhere in the slide deck there's something about our portal. One of the other things that's not satisfying is a lot of us produce results, and we do great work, we work really hard, and we go, and here's my poster. Right, and this is great for this meeting, and it's great for AGU, and it's great for publications, but it's not getting us to people who can actually start using it and evaluating it. So the idea of getting to analytics, to getting to geospatial information, to getting to artificial intelligence and machine learning, and things where people can go and say, that's a really nice picture, but give me more than a picture. Give me data and images and analysis, and let me put my mind and my community in efforts to work. The other piece you need to be thinking about, and I want you to think about here, is not just the front end of we can create observations, and we can map and we can model, but who are you giving it to? What do you expect them to do with it? Ultimately, decisions are going to be made whether they're informed by you or not. But the goal should be to be informed by you. You're smart, you're clever. So I want you to be thinking all the way through. One of the things we talked about is, when NASA puts about $2 million directly into global flood risk every year, other partners put millions of dollars. You're all funded in different ways. Why don't we hear about funding? World banks, different research organizations, the horizons and the pernicus efforts and Singapore hazard sites and everything else all are putting money towards us, but it's fragmented. So the reason we need to come together is figure out who has got what and where are the resources, and what resources are we actually short of versus we haven't got the resources working together? So I have a commitment of resources, but I want to leverage and partner and fill in where we need additional resources, and so do some of my colleagues around the world. There's no shortage of money. There's shortage of collective thinking of saying this is what we as a community need to do and it will get funded. But we and others who are in the position to funding can't invite 100 conversations. So one of the things we talked about is some kind of collective white paper, some kind of synthesis out of this community in the next few days. To say we want to inter-compare our models, we identify a couple of areas that are clearly at intensive risk. We want to pool our efforts there to see how good we are at it, and we're going to meet the communities and stakeholders, make sure they can use it, understand it, take action on it, and we will identify their shortfalls. And then the rest of us can bring resources, partnership, facilitate these types of meetings. So the onus is on you, so the only task is a lot of actions here, but don't keep it at a fluffy level. Challenge each other over the next two days. What's the most important thing we need to do now? In the next year? Potentially the next five or 10 years? Because efforts like GWX and others are 10-year initiatives. This does not happen overnight. Decide what needs to happen now. Some of us in a position to try and help that along. Thanks. Thank you, David. Are there any questions for David? And I'll be here. Yes. Then you can find David. And I'd like actually, you know, put this little...