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Military Bridge Crossing.
The Military Hydrology Group at ERDC’s Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) provides timely hydrologic information in data sparse regions to inform planning and execution of military operations. This involves the characterization of streams and rivers as well as soil conditions. The group supports DoD operations around the world with river forecasting, floodplain delineation, and weather-impacted mobility assessments. The aim is to provide total hydrologic awareness to the DoD, and U.S. Government writ large, through real-time analysis and forecasting that promotes battlespace awareness, risk mitigation, logistical support, and partnership building though best-in-class hydrologic tools that provide authoritative information for advanced decision making.
Capability Areas
Risk Mitigation
Logistical Support
Partnership Building
Battlespace Awareness
Motivation
Army and DoD policy documents place specific responsibility on the USACE as the director and monitor for Army programs in the atmospheric, topographic, hydrographic, and terrestrial sciences. This includes the simulation and visualization of environmental effects on Army assets; supporting and conducting relevant RDT&E activities to provide hydrological studies, forecasts, decision aids, and exploitation tools for military training, operations, and emergency response; and operationalizing and transitioning appropriate technologies to the U.S. Air Force Weather Enterprise in support of Army operations.
Supporting Technology
The Military Hydrology Group utilizes advanced modeling and simulation software coupled with remotely sensed data to assess conditions anywhere in the world. They do this through an integrated suite of models that link weather and climate information with complex terrestrial modeling capabilities and large-scale hydraulic routing applications that feed fine scale decision support applications. The modeling system consists of both open source and proprietary software.
Benefits
In addition to supporting military exercises and troop deployments through tailored requests, the Military Hydrology Group fields a number of web-based tools to make hydrologic information available on demand. These web-apps provide remote assessments of lakes and reservoirs, streamflow forecasts (and hindcasts), and real-time estimates of soil strength and trafficability. The apps periodically update to ensure timely and relevant information is always available. Rather than waiting days or weeks for subject matter experts to conduct their analysis, the information is readily available online in many cases.
Success Stories