NOAA/NWS Next Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework: How Science Drivers Enable Public-Private Partnerships

For over 20 years many in the hydrologic science community have called for development of community models to advance the skill of water prediction. Several attempts at this failed to attract significant community involvement for a number of reasons. The site-dependent nature of hydrology, or “uniqueness of place” rules out the optimal widespread application of any one model, because the flexibility to simulate the broad spectrum of potential dominant hydrologic processes using a single model requires a large number of parameters. Such complex models cannot compete against the demonstrated superiority of simpler models having fewer parameters and designed to simulate dominant local processes. For this reason, the NOAA/NWS Office of Water Prediction (OWP) has chosen a different path forward. Rather than developing a community model, OWP is developing an open-source, standards-based, model-agnostic model interoperability framework using model coupling and hydrogeospatial standards chosen in coordination with other federal water prediction agencies. Aimed a running hydrologic and hydraulic models and modules, the Next Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework (NextGen) provides enhanced opportunities for engagement with the academic research and private sectors. Transparent, open-source model development allows scientific evaluation of new models and modules and advances demonstrably superior approaches. Engagement with the research community focuses on science drivers aimed solidly at improving the predictive skill of models and data drivers as demonstrated using the NextGen Framework. Engagement between OWP and the private sector focuses on the final steps in the R2O pathway leading to development of accurate, hardened, and robust codes for operational deployment in the NextGen Framework. All this work is done in a standards-based common operating environment. Major advantages offered by use of the NextGen Framework include: code re-use resulting in continuous quality improvement, improved modularity and process granularity, and the ability to evaluate the worth of potential improvements at the scale of individual modeled processes over large domains. From a scientific perspective, the NextGen framework facilitates evaluation of proposed improvements in a common environment that maximizes the ability of researchers to better control their experiments. This presentation focuses on current science drivers as OWP moves towards operational deployment of version 4.0 of the National Water Model using the NextGen Framework.