Past Projects

Meteorological and Hydrological Telecommunications Upgrade

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical & Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) relies heavily on using telecommunication to get warnings and other meteorological services to the community that occupies the 7000 islands that make up the Philippines.  Innovative Hydrology provided consultancy on design, implementation, and training as part of a feasibility study funded by the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).  A thorough assessment was completed and a design using multiple telemetry systems was developed.  These telemetry systems included terrestrial radio as well as satellite which resulted in a resilient dual path telemetry system that serves a country that receives among the most destructive weather events of any place in the world.

Real-time Hydrologic Data Collection Modernization

South Feather Water and Power Agency (SFWPA) has command of the water resources in the South Feather River Basin of California that serves key areas of power generation as well as municipal and agricultural water supply.  Innovative Hydrology was called upon to modernize the existing hydrologic data collection network as well as assist SFWPA to develop internal capacity to manage the hydrologic network.  Innovative Hydrology introduced SFWPA to a variety of technologies that specifically address the measurement challenges in the catchment.  All stations were upgraded from 1980’s vintage data loggers to data loggers that provide real-time data communication through satellite.  Spread spectrum radio technology was used to gather data from remote areas.  On the sensor side of things, advanced bubblers, smart shaft encoders, ultrasonic water level measurement, as well as Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) were introduced to address the measurement requirements specific to SFWPA.

The SFWPA project included a data collection, hydrologic alarm, and dissemination system which automates processes that were both tedious and laborious previously. This system has been successfully implemented in the challenging environment of the Sierra Nevada, which imposes challenges on measurement as well as telecommunication.  

National Meteorological Center Meteorological Data Network Modernization

This project was named INTEROPERATE and involved the upgrade and enhancement of the functionalities of the Nation Integrated Meteorological System (SIMIN) in Romania.  INTEROPERATE added essential data processing capabilities to Romania’s integrated management system for meteorology while also developing ongoing training programs for professionals in this field.  Specific objectives included:

• Modernization and enhancement of the observation and processing subsystems for climatology
• Modernization of the agro-meteorological monitoring and forecast processes, and integrating them into a national system
• Modernization of atmospheric pollution monitoring and forecast processes, and integrating them into a national system
• Development of a national meteorological data processing and storage center, encompassing data from SIMIN, DESWAT, and WATMAN
• Development of an ongoing training program for meteorologists, agro-meteorologists, and environmental experts, with appropriate facilities

Our role as Senior Project Scientist  involved the development of strategy to successfully deal with modernization issues.  Extensive work was performed on investigating both regional models as well as models based in the United States.  A plan to integrate agro-meteorological and monitoring forecasts was developed along with a plan for integration into a national system.

The largest part of this effort was spent on integrating the information from their various programs into a unified information system.  SIMIN, DESWAT, and WATMAN were developed in a relative vacuum with respect to each other.  Our task was to bring all these projects together so that information could be shared between projects. This was a considerable integration project.