Speaker: David R. Maidment, University of Texas at Austin

In August 2016 the National Weather Service launched the new National Water Model, which continually forecasts the flow in 2.7 million stream reaches covering 3.2 million miles of rivers and streams of the continental United States.  From atmosphere to the oceans, from coast to coast, water is now forecast just like weather – at local scale, and in near real-time.  The seminar will describe how the National Water Model came about, what it does, and what it may mean for the future of water resources science and management in the United States.

David R. Maidment is the Hussein M. Alharthy Centennial Chair in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been on the faculty since 1981.  He is a surface water hydrologist, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for development of geographic information systems applied to hydrologic processes.