National Flood Interoperability Experiment

Abstract:

The National Flood Interoperability Experiment is led by the academic community in collaboration with the National Weather Service through the new National Water Center recently opened on the Tuscaloosa campus of the University of Alabama. The experiment will also involve the partners in IWRSS (Integrated Water Resources Science and Services), which include the USGS, the Corps of Engineers and FEMA. The experiment will address the following questions: (1) How can near-real-time hydrologic forecasting at high spatial resolution, covering the nation, be carried out using the NHDPlus or next generation geofabric (e.g. hillslope, watershed scales)? (2) How can this lead to improved emergency response and community resilience? (3) How can improved an improved interoperability framework support the first two goals and lead to sustained innovation in the research to operations process? The experiment will run from September 2014 through August 2015, in two phases. The mobilization phase from September 2014 until May 2015 will assemble the components of the interoperability framework. A Summer Institute to integrate the components will be held from June to August 2015 at the National Water Center involving faculty and students from the University of Alabama and other institutions coordinated by CUAHSI. It is intended that the insight that arises from this experiment will help lay the foundation for a new national scale, high spatial resolution, near-real-time hydrologic simulation system for the United States.