News and Events >CU Civil Engineering Center is Prolific Software Developer

CU Civil Engineering Center is Prolific Software Developer

September 15, 2004

Boulder, CO - RiverWareT is a reservoir and river modeling software decision support tool, developed at the Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CU-CADSWES), College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Boulder. Water management professionals improve their management of river and reservoir systems by using the software. The ongoing RiverWareT research and development at CADSWES is sponsored by the three largest U.S. federal water management agencies: the Bureau of Reclamation, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers.

With RiverWareT, users can model the topology, physical processes and operating policies of river and reservoir systems, and make better decisions about how to operate these systems by understanding and evaluating the trade-offs among the various management objectives. These objectives may include storing and delivering water to agriculture, cities and industry; controlling floods; achieving economical hydropower generation schedules; protecting water quality, aquatic species and riparian habitats; providing lake levels and releases suitable for a wide range of recreational activities; and maintaining navigable depths. Agencies use the tool to schedule daily operations, forecast mid-term operations, make long range plans, and evaluate policy alternatives. RiverWareT is used for operations, planning and policy studies on many major river systems such as the Colorado, the Rio Grande, the Pecos, the Arkansas and the Tennessee Valley.

Licensing RiverWareT provides funds to update and maintain the software as a reliable commercial product, thus making this important and innovative technology available to the water management community in the U.S. and abroad. Licensing benefits the R&D sponsors by helping to pay for the software maintenance and also by allowing their stakeholders and consultants to collaborate in studies and decision processes. Lower-cost licenses are available to academic and research institutes for teaching and research. By making RiverWareT available as a product, CADSWES has built a community of users and enhanced its position as a hub of water systems research. CADSWES is also able to offer services related to RiverWareT, such as training classes, a user support service, an annual Users' Group meeting, and a free read-only version of the software for stakeholders who need to see and understand the results of studies.

For more information on RiverWareT see http://cadswes.colorado.edu/riverware/