Riverside Climate Information Systems

Water planners, decision makers and commercial market participants require tools to help them understand complex systems associated with water supply, changing climate, and risk based events. To address this need, Riverside Technology, inc. has produced a variety of web based Decision Support Systems (DSS) and periodic information products based on public and private sector data. The central theme of the products is related to timing, water availability and total volume of water supply in time scales from near real-time to planning time horizons under future climate scenarios. Riverside's engineering focus and understanding of the forecasting process allows us to provide additional insight into the data and to craft information products that shed light on the uncertainty of the data and limits of the underlying model structure. The presentation will show a set of Riverside information products, focusing on the needs of the users, the modeling technology, and how these connect to other publicly available information products.

The Flood DSS provides a clearinghouse of flood-hazard and flood-related information for the State of Colorado under a web-based framework. Riverside constructed the Flood DSS for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and the information is used by floodplain administrators, emergency managers, developers, the insurance industry, government agencies and the public. It provides timely and well-organized data products for emergency managers.

Riverside developed a Climate Change DSS to provide water managers with a tool to explore a range of current Global Climate Model (GCM) projections to evaluate their potential impacts on streamflow and the reliability of future water supplies. The system was developed as part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project. The DSS uses downscaled GCM data as input to small-scale watershed models to produce time series of projected undepleted streamflow for various emission scenarios and GCM simulations.

Riverside provides a subscription based water supply forecast for the Pacific Northwest through a customized web portal. Clients interested in the hydropower market are alerted of changes in water supply through biweekly updates. The web site allows a one-stop portal for interested parties to obtain information about water supply, regulated flows, power generation, snow water equivalent, soil moisture, and weather.