On November 19, 2025, Google.org awarded BYU a grant of $3.5 million to support Dr. Jim Nelson’s research with Group on Earth Observations Global Water Sustainability (GEOGLOWS), a public service that provides advanced hydrologic (water cycle) data to communities around the world.
Nelson, a BYU civil and construction engineering professor with expertise in hydrologic modeling, collaborates with national and international hydrologic services and students to maintain GEOGLOWS, which consolidates water datasets into tools like the River Forecast System (RFS). The forecast provides an 85-year historical record and a 15-day prediction of the volume of water flowing through over 7 million river segments worldwide.
Smaller international communities with technological advancement barriers, especially in South America and Africa, benefit from the forecast because their National Hydrological Services (NHSs) can use the free tool from all over the world to manage water resources. The NHSs otherwise wouldn’t be able to obtain the data because their under-developed resources cannot access advancing hydrologic research that contributors to GEOGLOWS can.
The forecast packages the data into streamlined water sustainability and safety education for each community, allowing them to efficiently make their own decisions about water use in their individual situations: water infrastructure, safety during floods or droughts, and water resource allocation.
In Ecuador, a vulnerable, water-scarce community made an empowered decision to use their limited resources to build irrigation systems that they knew would flow because of the forecast’s historical data, improving agricultural productivity and quality of life. In Malawi, community flood early warning systems improved accuracy and lead times with GEOGLOWS data. In a recent year, their government noted that not one life was lost and millions of dollars of resources were saved, while in previous years people were caught unaware, resulting in loss of life and greater property damages.
These individual successes happen all over the globe because of funded BYU student outreach trips. Nelson’s team trains communities abroad to use data from RFS as they make decisions. Other BYU contributors like Dr. Riley Hales, manager of the BYU Hydroinformatics Lab, are instrumental in GEOGLOWS RFS developments, Nelson says.
The BYU GEOGLOWS team is currently training Kenyan national services. They also continue work in Jamaica and Cuba, where forecast data provided valuable insights during the recent water disaster Hurricane Melissa.
BYU will use the gifted grant funds from Google.org to continue growing GEOGLOWS’ impact, maintain relationships with contributing world leaders in hydrologic modeling, and sustain student outreach. Most importantly, the grant supports a partnership with GEOGLOWS and Google.org, allowing GEOGLOWS to expand into a non-profit organization delivering data resources long-term, beyond BYU’s research programs.
Students, Nelson, and the BYU GEOGLOWS team work to fulfill the university’s goal to serve vulnerable communities. President C. Shane Reese emphasized this purpose in his university conference address titled “Making Every Effort: Patience, Professionalism, and Spirituality.”
“We’ve officially begun explorations for a new university-wide initiative on poverty alleviation,” Reese said. “Together, these—and many other projects—reflect BYU’s mission to combine learning and Christlike service. And as our campus becomes more organized and coordinated in the months and years ahead, we anticipate that the impact for good will only increase.”
Led by BYU researchers, the GEOGLOWS team has worked with world leaders—funded research from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and collaborative support from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Esri (one of the leading global companies for Geographic Information System (GIS) software), and Amazon Web Services (AWS)—to develop the RFS over the past 10 years, now with over 40 million annual data download requests.
Nelson hopes to continue that teamwork to strengthen the forecast. Together with Google.org, they can provide a united stream of valuable data-sharing tools that decrease harmful aftermath of natural disasters and help solve critical water-insecurity challenges for communities worldwide.
Nelson says he and the team struggle to find the right way to express gratitude for this timely collaboration that makes it possible to provide a global public good that increases quality of life.
“The GEOGLOWS research project has become important to so many people,” Nelson said. “I’m grateful that the Google.org gift will ensure that the service continues to operate and allow us to improve it.”