Abel Porras, Supervising Engineer with the City of Austin Watershed Protection Department
WPD is charged with protecting the lives and property of City of Austin residents from flooding, erosion, and water pollution. To that end, WPD has developed watershed models to answer a variety of questions related to erosion and water pollution. The impetus for these models was the Stream Functional Pyramid developed by Harman et al (2012), which linked hydrology with geomorphology, chemistry, and biology. WPD then adapted this framework to include the human/social component in watershed science. With this framework, they are able to examine how these components interact with each other using four modeling techniques: sociological modeling, superforecasting, physics-based watershed models, and deep learning algorithms. Mr. Porras will discuss sociological modeling and superforecasting briefly, but focus this presentation on physics-based modeling and deep learning algorithms. Using these models at a fine scale, WPD is able to identify problems and propose solutions.
The N-EWN Knowledge Series offers 1 Continuing Education Credit (CEC) per seminar. This Series is presented by N-EWN, Limnotech, the University of Georgia, and USACE ERDC.