But too much rain saturates the land, overflows streambanks, and overwhelms whatever lies in the water's path. Fifty thousand dwellings were damaged. Floods of this intensity will happen again. The Application Technologies Environmental Hydrology Team is developing new technologies that will enable engineers and policymakers to make better decisions about these and many other questions of river basin and watershed management. Current computational models of hydrologic systems are, for the most part, isolated from each other.
Atmospheric models describe the physics of clouds and predict rainfall.
River models predict flow in stream channels under varying conditions. Runoff models describe surface flow patterns and help to assess the consequences of development. One of this team's major tasks is to integrate these disparate models so that they more accurately mirror the real world. The goal is to create a computational infrastructure, which includes collaborative visualization tools for predicting events, preparing for emergencies, and managing the ecosystem. The team's model of this ecosystem will incorporate circulation, temperature, and salinity patterns in three dimensions, winds, tides, river runoff, and the movement of fish larvae.