HEC-RAS into CHPS

NEWS AND ACTIVITIES (in reverse chronological order)

July 2008

The only impediment to Phase 2 (implementation) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) project now involves contracts. Deltares is waiting for authorization from NOAA Procurement to proceed; funds for HEC were transferred at the end of June; HEC will notify OHD when they can begin work

April 2008

Deltares and OHD traveled to LMRFC in February to discuss functional requirements for the HEC-RAS capability in CHPS. OHRFC also attended. The Deltares-OHD team then traveled on to Davis, CA to meet with USACE HEC and its contractor Resource Management Associates (RMA); RMA is the contractor that built the Corps Water Management System (CWMS) in collaboration with HEC. The goal of the meeting in Davis was to discuss potential solutions.

Deltares, HEC, and LMRFC came to an agreement concerning the overall technical solution, which allowed Deltares to draw up a proposal for review on March 25.

Phase 1 (design) of the project is now complete. Phase 2 (implementation of the proposed solution) is expected to begin once contract tasks are in place for Deltares and HEC.

With the decision that OHD will discontinue support for FldWav, the transition of forecasting operations from FldWav to HEC-RAS is now a CHPS operational capability pre-requisite.

January 2008

Phase 1 of the project began with a kick-off conference call in December where a proposed project schedule was discussed. The project team consists of the following members:

• Delft (Deltares) as the overall software project lead.
• LMRFC (David Welch, Dave Ramirez) will provide the RFC forecaster perspective, as well as technical support for potential use of local applications. [Note: OHD has also contacted OHRFC to request their participation on the team.]
• HEC will identify the level of effort required to port their existing Sun Solaris-based RAS software to Linux.
• OHD HSMB will represent OHD's requirements for getting RAS into operations as a replacement for FldWav.
• OHD HSEB will monitor the contract task with Apex (mechanism used to access Deltares), and also the MOA between HEC and OHD.

Deltares plans to travel to the U.S. at the end of February to meet with HEC, OHD, and LMRFC, and begin the process of prototyping/designing a solution.

Phase 2 of the project - implementation of the final solution - is expected to begin later this FY.

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October 2007

The goal of this project is to provide RFCs with access to the USACE HEC River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) via CHPS (not NWSRFS). HSEB anticipates two phases, the first of which (Phase 1) will be the solution design; this piece has now been contracted out to Delft. The solution is expected to leverage much of the CHPS-based software developed on the ResSim project, without the connection to NWSRFS.

Also this quarter NOAA and the USACE finalized an updated Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the two agencies, thereby providing a vehicle to fund HEC's contributions to Phase 1 of this project. Funding is also now secured. With agreements, contracts, and funding in place, all that remains is for HEC to complete other unrelated commitments and release their staff to begin Phase 1.

The second phase, implementation of the design, will require HEC and other HSEB contractors (to be determined) to implement the proposed software design into CHPS.

July 2007

After a series of discussions with HSMB and HEC, HSEB began the necessary paperwork to begin the task of incorporating the USACE HEC River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) into CHPS. HSEB anticipates two phases, the first of which will be the solution design; this piece will be contracted out to Apex. The second phase, implementation of the design, will require HEC and possibly others to develop additional software. The solution is expected to leverage much of the CHPS-based software developed on the ResSim project.

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