Video Transcripts

The kind of research I do deals with application of computer models for river and reservoir operations. Some of those models are models that we might develop, and some of those are applications of existing models and at CSU we have developed a number of models for river and reservoir modeling.

The kinds of modeling work that we are involved in is kind of basic quantity work in terms of looking at how you would operate a system to meet the demands, which is very critical now, for example in the west, as we have more and more population, we have had this just recent drought, but we still have the same amount of water we have always had.

We have also been adding more and more applications related to water quality. So, now we are looking at both water quantity and water quality, and there is a number of very important current issues with endangered species and other kinds of environmental considerations that impact the operation of those systems.

Another area of research that I work on is in assisting in decision making. For example, you might call this a decision support analysis, where we use some technologies to help document and help quantify some of the myriad of considerations that you have to look at when you have a large, like a reservoir, project. We are using such techniques as multi-criteria decision analysis, some expert systems, some fuzzy logic as a way to do that.

The students that work with me work typically in modeling. As an example, I will give you a couple recent examples. I have had two recent Ph.D. graduates. One worked on developing a model to select drought management strategies in Africa because in a developing country, it's really different than a developed country in terms of what kind of strategies we can use. And then another one worked on linking geographical information systems for measuring some data in the field, getting some data that you can't measure, and then using kind of a multi'criteria approach which really you say what are my objectives, what's the relative importance, and then coming up with a way to make recommendations. and this was for water management in the South Platte, and it dealt with not only water quantity, but also with environmental issues, particularly wildlife habitat.

I really enjoy having a student that comes in and says, "I thought of a different way to do this," and they will be back two days later and say, "Well, I thought of another different way to do this. What do you think about that?" Because I find that very intellectually stimulating for me as well as it is indicative of a person that's not afraid to think outside of the boundaries and do something different.

The field of water resource management is changing just radically. So, that's one reason I enjoy this because it is so dynamic. In terms of the specific computing technologies, computing technology has changed so much - even in the last decade - that we can completely rethink the way that we model systems, not just in terms of different hardware available, but different software, to different abilities that do things conceptually. For example, it used to be that we could measure very little data. We have measurements, but comparatively that was small, and we had very slow access to that data. And so the models we built were kind of based according to that. Well, today, it is very inexpensive to have remote sensing units that send data to satellite and boom, it's on a database immediately. That's probably the major change. The other thing is that the science, both with respect to water and environment, has really opened some new dimensions in terms of our understanding.

Well, now we don't talk about minimum flows. We talk about environmental flows, and these aren't just a number, that there is a shape, there is flushing flows, the flows have to come at different times, they have different patterns, because now we understand a lot more about how the fisheries interact with the other biota. When I started, we never heard of issues of how flows affect riparian vegetation. Now, we know all kinds of things about how if we change the flow in a stream, you can change the vegetation along the stream, and that science is continuing to explode. And so as that does, again that gives us some opportunities to completely rethink the way we operate our systems.