Seminar 2

Speaker: Dr. Eunsang Cho, Ingram School of Engineering

Abstract: Catastrophic spring floods routinely impact local and regional communities across the U.S. For example, the Red River of the North Basin (RRB)’s 1997 and 2011 spring floods caused each more than $5 billion in damages in local communities. Accurate flood forecasts have been challenged by the unsolved complex mechanism of spring flood generation. The premise of this proposal is that better accounting for groundwater condition will improve subsequent spring flooding predictions, with consequent benefits for local society and state government in flood vulnerable regions 
through the enhanced capability of these flood modeling capability. The overarching goal of this project is 

(1) to improve the physical understanding of the groundwater impact on spring flood events and 

(2) to enhance the modeling capability of spring floods using satellite data, large scale hydrologic modeling, and data assimilation techniques. 

The output of the work will provide critical information about how much the uncertainties related to groundwater can be reduced in spring flood prediction. This work would also advance the state of practice for current operational efforts. Subsequently, the proposed work will contribute to effective flood risk management strategies, lowering the societal costs of flood emergency management for state and federal governments and communities. The project team has sufficient capacity to accomplish the proposed research goals with combined expertise of satellite data sets, hydrological modeling, and data assimilation. The proposed work will be directly leveraged toward future external funding opportunities including Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) grants and NASA and NSF hydrology programs.

Date: October 18th, 2024, Friday, 11:30 -13:00.
11:30-11:45: Registration and lunch
11:45-12:00: Keynote: Dr. Soe Win Myint, Endowed Chair, Geography & Environmental Studies
12:00-12:30: Innovation Seed Award Seminar by Dr. Eunsang Cho
12:30-12:40: Funding Opportunities Overview
12:40-13:00: Q&A, Discussion