At a time of rising climate change impacts, there is a vital and growing need to help authorities and ordinary citizens prepare for, respond to, and recover from floods and other disasters.  
One important way government authorities can assess predict natural disasters and assess their impact is to use specialized geospatial processing algorithms on satellite images. As well, online communities are forming to allow citizens to take pictures and contribute scientific observations of wildlife and the environment. However, these two approaches to scientific observation of natural environments and disasters are largely disconnected from each other. 
We have created a prototype web application that combines them. Government authorities/data scientists will be able to directly request “ground truth” observations from citizens to assess the validity of their satellite processing algorithms. Citizens will be able to submit their observations directly to the authorities for evaluation and use.  This application will help close a critical communication gap which prevents scientists and government officials from easily enlisting citizens to validate and enhance the satellite image processing algorithms directly and in near real-time, to determine the “ground truth”.