September 8, 2016

by Pedro Jaime Gutierrez

What happens when you bring together a talented team of scientists and PhD students, along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? Answer: You get a set of advanced web-based tools and recognition at a prestigious national conference on water and hydraulics.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Institute for Water Resources funded the Iowa Watershed Decision Support System (IoWaDSS) project to assemble data, tools, and models in one geoportal. Working closely with Principal Investigators Marian Muste and Ibrahim Demir, IIHR graduate student Haowen Xu and the rest of the team (Haider Hameed and Mary Windsor) worked with the USACE to design a system that would not only be easy to access, but also straightforward to update. As system architect, Xu focused on using web-based tools to promote communication among different labs.

This summer, Xu traveled to Sacramento, Calif., for the 2016 American Water Resource Association (AWRA) Summer Specialty Conference, better known as GIS and Water Resources IX. Xu went to the conference not only to learn more about what people are doing in hydrology all over the world, but also to present his own work on the IoWaDSS project.

At the conference, Xu was named the winner of the AWRA Student Oral Presenter Competition. On behalf of the Iowa Flood Center we would like to congratulate him on this honor.

Originally from China, Xu is now not only a fluent English speaker, but also communicates advanced concepts and ideas in hydraulics. His presentation was titled “Visualization Platform for Collaborative Modeling: The Iowa Watershed Decision Support System.”

“With my team, I am happy to receive an honorable award,” Xu says. The team put countless hours of work into a system that even the EPA and other experts from around the country found interesting.

Visit the Iowa Watershed Decision Support System: http://iowawatersheds.org/dev/dss_alpha