Baron Partners with Alabama Water Institute on $360M Project

Baron Weather, the worldwide commercial supplier of superior weather intelligence for critical decision-making, is proud to have been selected as a partner in the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will award up to $360 million to fund CIROH flood forecasting and research projects. CIROH will be administered by the Alabama Water Institute on the University of Alabama campus and is poised to become a standard-bearer in translating water research into operations that improve the nation’s ability to predict water-related hazards and effectively manage water resources.

Baron is the largest private partner in the consortim and brings expertise in flood forecast modeling and the communication of critical weather information that will be an asset to the effort.

“I am thrilled that NOAA has chosen the Alabama Water Institute to lead this outstanding consortium, and I am equally thrilled that Baron was chosen as a partner in this effort,” said Baron Chief Scientist John McHenry, who also serves as Chair of the AMS Committee on Hydrology.

Baron is committed to utilizing its modeling expertise along with CIROH collaborations to improve public and private sector capabilities to respond to water-related severe weather events.

“Our deep expertise in advanced flood inundation modeling as well as in GIS, machine learning, QPE advancement, and techniques for warning dissemination and visualization will bring a tremendous resource for rapid acceleration of research-to-operations on behalf of the National Water Center and NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction,” McHenry added.

The consortium will assist NOAA’s vision of a water- and weather-ready nation. CIROH will advance water research in support of NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction and reinforce the work of the National Weather Service and National Water Center through collaboration across the scientific community in four broad research themes:

• Water resources prediction capabilities
• Community water resources modeling
• Hydroinformatics
• Application of social, economic, and behavioral science to water resources prediction

One of Baron's roles is providing a mature modeling component containing “flood-inundation dynamics” to the next-generation National Water Model (NWM). Baron will also focus its efforts on helping to create flood forecasts that are easier to communicate to the public. While outputs from the first-generation NWM proved challenging to work with for many service providers, Baron plans to leverage its broad experience working with our enterprise and broadcast television partners such that operational “NextGen” NOAA-NWM model forecasts can be easily used to maximum effectiveness in saving lives and mitigating property loss.

The consortium comprises 28 academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and government and industry partners, bringing together a powerful team of hydrologic researchers across the United States and Canada.

You can read more about CIROH here.