SBIR-STTR Award

Water managers are increasingly recognizing climate change as a significant issue and are requesting detailed information about potential hydrologic impacts suitable for inclusion in planning. Available studies, however, are most often academic in nature and have the added limitation of being incompatible with agency specific water management models or the streamflow period of interest. Commission of system focused studies, are prohibitively expensive for most municipalities and agencies. Our goal is thus to develop a web-based system to provide widespread and low-cost access to tools that can be used to generate scenarios of future streamflow. The proposed project will determine the feasibility of developing a prototype web-based Climate Change Drought Decision Support System (C2D2S2) that will enable water managers at various operational- and time-scales to rapidly assess the impact of predicted climate change on natural flows at critical nodes along a river network SUMMARY OF

Anticipated Results:
This Phase I project will determine the feasibility of developing models and tools to process climate change and hydrologic time series data to generate probabilistic ensembles of stream flows and water availability under projected climate change and drought conditions. Prospective users and commercialization potential will be addressed and evaluated at a level sufficient for feasibility and for further development under a Phase II project

In Phase I, we identified the need for a readily accessible web-based framework that integrates a credible hydrologic model with climate change and forecast products for hydrological impact studies and water supply projections. The focus in developing the Phase I Climate Change Drought Decision Support System (C2D2S2) prototype was to develop an infrastructure that addresses the critical decision needs of water managers, and supports: i) selecting a climate change emissions scenario, a particular GACMA simulation, and an associated downscaled dataset; ii) executing a hydrologic model to simulate projected basin streamflow; and iii) producing displays that enable users to assess and compare results. The Phase II proposal identifies key scientific and technical objectives that must be accomplished to make C2D2S2 operational with commercial potential. These objectives include: evaluations and meeting customer needs, upgrading the hardware/software system to be operational, including additional hydrologic models, providing tools for drought analysis, providing an interface to external river basin models, providing data and information from different downscaling methods, providing tools for display and analysis of paleohydrology data, providing tools for assessment of uncertainty in the results, and providing outreach to ensure that appropriate science is included and that user requirements are met. SUMMARY OF

Anticipated Results:
Phase II will produce a commercially viable C2D2S2 that provides an infrastructure for water users to make informed decisions by comparing GCM and downscaled datasets, selecting scenarios, executing hydrologic models, performing analyses, and exporting results