Co-developing a pilot resource with water decision-makers to increase the accessibility of NOAA’s National Water Model (NWM) for use by a diverse group of users

Project Background

Beginning in August 2024 and building from the outcomes of Phases 1 and 2, Phase 3 investigated how the NWM could be made more accessible to a broad group of users with diverse professional backgrounds – who also play key roles in community-level water decision-making and resilience planning. Prior Phases of the study revealed that while few of these potential users had previously heard of the model, they had many ideas for how they could leverage it in their work once they learned about it. However, they also reported barriers in accessing, interpreting, and utilizing NWM information effectively, especially when they lacked specialized hydrological expertise. Therefore, Phase 3 worked with decision-makers in Vermont and Missouri, a subset of the stakeholders engaged in Phase 2, to further investigate how to increase the accessibility of the NWM. FloodSavvy was co-developed with these stakeholders as a supplementary resource to the NWM that translates complex NWM outputs into a user-friendly interface tailored to their information needs. We also created a NWM tutorial to help first-time users of the NWM navigate, access, and interpret useful hydrological data.

Below you’ll find links to the two resources – FloodSavvy and the NWM Tutorial – as well as an article about our co-development process for creating FloodSavvy and community narratives showcasing how six communities have used this tool in their work.

FloodSavvy

FloodSavvy is a web interface designed to lower the barrier to entry to using official NOAA products by providing simple flood risk insights. The tool integrates NWM data, including forecasted and historical streamflow, as well as pre-computed flood maps, to assist with community water decision-making.