Editor’s note: Each semester, students in the Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. program can apply for a Geospatial Analytics Travel Award that supports research travel or presentations at conferences. The following is a guest post by travel award winner Emma Vail as part of the Student Travel series.

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2025 Annual Meeting brought thousands of researchers to New Orleans to share new work on Earth systems, hazards, and resilience. For me, it was a chance to engage with the broader flood science community, especially those working at the core of flood-focused remote sensing and decision support. 

One of the highlights of my week was attending the NASA Early Career Research Program event, where I learned about funding opportunities and different paths for early-career scientists. What stood out most was the activity we did that showcased how many people are working in hydrology and related hazard research. Whether someone studies floods, drought, water quality, or coastal change, the motivation felt similar: using science and technology to better understand environmental risk and help communities prepare for it. That shared purpose made it easy to connect with people quickly and have surprisingly meaningful conversations in a short amount of time.

I also spent time in sessions focused on new advances in hydrology, including how remote sensing, AI, and modeling are increasingly used in powerful and innovative ways. The field is moving quickly toward approaches that connect physical understanding with scalable analytics that link sensors, algorithms, and models to characterize events more effectively across regions and time. Listening to these talks helped me clarify what I want my own work to contribute. In essence, if flood maps are going to be trusted and comparable across landscapes, we need consistent baselines that make sensor trade-offs visible rather than assumed.

During the conference, I presented a poster on a central part of my dissertation research that involves establishing baseline flood-mapping performance across public and commercial satellite sensors using a consistent benchmarking framework. The goal is not to identify one sensor as universally “best,” but to make trade-offs easier to evaluate so choices about data and methods are evidence-based and matched to the landscape and application. The poster session was one of the most rewarding parts of AGU because it created space for real discussion, most of which was one-on-one. I spoke with researchers from a variety of fields who asked thought-provoking questions and offered practical suggestions, and I was able to turn them into a clear set of next steps I’m excited to test.

Beyond the poster hall, AGU reinforced how collaborative this field is. Conversations turned into suggestions such as datasets to consider, alternative validation strategies, and better ways to contextualize results for audiences who rely on flood maps but do not work in remote sensing. I left New Orleans with renewed momentum to refine the benchmark and translate results into guidance that is both transparent and usable.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Dr. Mirela G. Tulbure and the Global Analysis for Environmental Change Lab for the work, feedback, and support for this project. Thank you to CGA for funding.