Integrate observations and field work in support of expanded evaluation data testbeds in the Northeast

This cross-cutting project will build a Northeast National Water Model (NWM) Applications Testbed that defines best practices and implementation frameworks for water resource forecasts that make use of NWM outputs and provides the cyberinfrastructure resources necessary to fuse a diverse array of data sources to force and evaluate the forecasts.

The goal of the project is to support evaluation and research to operations (R2O) for the following three NWM application forecast use cases: (1) Improving the representation of floodplain effects on hydraulic routing and flood inundation modeling and mapping (flood forecasting); (2) Coupling novel low-cost spatially distributed nutrient sensors and NWM output to forecast nutrient loading and inform state implementation of EPA mandated nutrient reduction targets (nutrient forecasting); and (3) Forecasting the incidence and duration of harmful algal blooms (HABs) at daily, weekly, and seasonal scales (HABs forecasting).

This work supports research on the development of water quantity and quality forecasts in the NWM with the following objectives: (1) Verify river stage time series and flood inundation dynamics at selected sites representative of different hydrogeomorphic settings to inform improved channel routing algorithms (flood forecasting); and (2) Improve the understanding of the relationships between streamflow and transported constituents in support of developing water quality forecasts (nutrient forecasting) and predicting the occurrence of harmful algal blooms (HABs forecasting).

The Northeast NWM Application Testbed will expand and maintain a river and floodplain sensor network consisting of (1) High-frequency, low-cost sensor systems installed along select NHDplus reaches to monitor river stage and document floodplain inundation timing, duration, and extent; (2) Drone-based sensors to spatially enhance and contextualize at-a-point measurements of river stage; and (3) High-frequency turbidity sensors to guide the development of discharge-concentration relationships. The Testbed will also establish water resource forecasting best practices and implementation frameworks as well as the complementary cyberinfrastructure necessary to provide data and code for forecast evaluation, utilities and containers to analyze and reformat data, documentation for the various data sources, and operational user outreach and facilitation to help the CIROH forecast teams use the Testbed.

The Northeast NWM Applications Testbed will serve as an integration and collaboration nexus for NWM applications researchers both regionally and nationally. Through the testbed services, including compute resources, data storage, a forecast workflow and protocol framework, software tools, and facilitation, the Testbed is catalyzing CIROH research across the three use cases by providing an accessible, easy-to-use, standardized set of evaluation data, models, and tools to researchers. In addition, the Testbed is convening discussions among regional and national CIROH participants around evaluation best practices including next generation evaluation metrics (information theory, event-based, and object-based) and error analysis and disaggregation methods. The Testbed will support establishment of new operational NWM application forecasts across the three initial test cases. In addition, as our Testbed users develop their NWM application forecasts, they can contribute to NextGen development by determining which NWM reach forecasts contribute most to the errors in their own NWM application forecast and inform which hydrology models are most appropriate for certain classes of reaches or in need of further development.