Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH)

Funded by NOAA, this three phase CIROH study investigates the potential applications of the National Water Model (NWM) and how it may help in protecting communities and building resilience to flood and water-based disasters, working on the ground with community resilience planners, hydrologists, and local residents.

Project Background

Funded by NOAA, the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH), is a Consortium of universities run by the University of Alabama focused on advancing water prediction abilities and building resilience to water-based disasters. Our partner for this project, CUAHSI, and also member of the CIROH consortium, designed this project to 1) better understand the landscape of how communities apply the National Water Model (NWM) to resilience planning, 2) demonstrate a set of applications with local communities, and 3) investigate how the NWM could help address the prevalent lack of capacity that some communities face that prevents them from engaging in resilience planning. The NWM is a mathematical modeling framework of water and weather cycles that tracks and predicts changes in precipitation, snowmelt, near-surface soil moisture, streamflow, and evapotranspiration across the continental US (NOAA, 2016).

Built upon foundational research conducted by authors Kristin Raub and Joshua Laufer in “Assessment of the National Water Model’s Current and Potential Role in Community Resilience Planning: A Case Study Analysis” (2022), our team at GRI worked with community planners across geographically diverse communities in Burlington, Cincinnati, Portland, Charlotte, Boulder, Minneapolis, and Houston to measure their understanding and need of the NWM, and worked with these communities and NOAA to create recommendations to improve the tool for end-user experience.

Who are community resilience planners? Our study found that this title comprised a range of professions: hazard mitigation planners, floodplain managers, emergency managers, consultants who were hired to assist with or write plans for communities, academics, water utility professionals, water quality experts, dam operators, and hydrologists, demonstrating the broad audience that climate tools must be accessible to in order to plan for community resiliency and hazard mitigation.

Principal Investigators

Stephen E. Flynn, s.flynn@northeastern.edu

Kristin B. Raub, k.raub@northeastern.edu

Team members

Stephen E. Flynn, s.flynn@northeastern.edu
Kristin B. Raub, k.raub@northeastern.edu
Trissha Sivalingam, t.sivalingam@northeastern.edu
Shemilore Daniels, s.daniels@northeastern.edu
Angie Valencia, a.valencia@northeastern.edu
Ciaran Hedderman, c.hedderman@northeastern.edu
Robin White, r.white@northeastern.edu
Elizabeth Moore, e.moore@northeastern.edu
Larissa Marchiori Pacheco, l.marchioripacheco@northeastern.edu
María G Méndez Guijjaro,Puerto Rico Science Technology and Research Trust

CIROH Phase 1

Working with communities in Burlington, Cincinnati, Portland, Charlotte, Boulder, Minneapolis, and Houston, as well as our partners at NOAA, our team at GRI was able to assess the accessibility of the NWM for resilience planners as well as document and publish their recommendations for tool improvement, improving accessibility to this essential climate tool.

CIROH Phase 2

CIROH Phase 3

Phase 3 of this study will begin in Summer 2024. Phase 3 will build from the results and outcomes of Phase 1 and 2 to investigate a “special use case ” that captures a central challenge for resilience planning: a lack of capacity. This phase will continue to work with our selected communities to capture their insight and limitations in the community resilience planning process.