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Precipitation frequency estimates are used to determine runoff and flow rates for specific design events. This information is necessary to properly design storm drains, ponds, culverts and water quality facilities ensuring they are adequately sized to handle the amount of water. If the structures or facilities are too small, the risk of flooding will be high. If they are too big, designers are wasting money. Several Riverside staff members work on-site at the Hydrometeorological Design Studies Center (HDSC) – the NOAA center responsible for generating and releasing this valuable information. The updated precipitation frequency estimate maps have been released for the following 17 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. These estimates are used in almost all infrastructure design in the USA. Riverside staff played a key role in this enormous project that included the following activities:

• Formatting and analyzing extreme precipitation data collected by 40 agencies at more than 25,000 locations (and also, temperature and snowfall data at high elevation stations;
• Performing a range of tasks related to at-station frequency analysis for each of 19 durations independently;
• Spatially interpolated at-station estimates at each of 10 return periods and 19 durations, and assured consistency in estimates across all return periods and durations (190 combinations);
• Generating approximated 3000 ASCII files with high resolution grids of precipitation and rainfall frequency estimates and corresponding lower and upper bounds of the 90% confidence interval that are available for download from the PFDS;
• Creating 290 high quality cartographic maps of precipitation frequency estimates for selected return periods and durations.

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Fort Collins, CO recently awarded its information technology support contract to a team led by Vistronix, Inc., based in Reston, VA, and is comprised of several team members including Riverside. The project supports the USDA Department of Natural Resources Conservation Service Information Technology Division (ITD) Development and Operations branch. This one-year contract, with four option years, went into effect the beginning of August. The team is developing, integrating, maintaining support, providing security enhancements, 508 compliance, and enhancements for applications managed by the NRCS ITD Development and Operations branch. These applications include: Conservation Program Delivery (CPD), Natural Resource Information, Inventory, and Assessment (NRIIA), and Water and Climate Information System (WCIS). With over 25 years in the business of providing consulting and engineering services nationally and internationally as both a prime and a sub-contractor, Riverside has the experience, knowledge, and technological expertise to meet the requirements of this contract as part of the Vistronix team..

Justin Kattnig was the recipient of the Riverside Scholarship for Colorado State University, 2012-2013 academic year. Justin is a third year student at CSU majoring in Civil Engineering. He has been a research assistant for various hydrology and water quality projects concerning the Arkansas River. Justin will be graduating in 2013. In addition to being a full-time student, Justin realizes the value in giving back to the community by participating in organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America. Congratulations Justin!

Riverside was awarded a project to develop an internal and external web portal for the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO). The portal will permit access to water resources datasets in the Eastern Nile Region to facilitate access to data for modeling purposes and to permit modeling results to be updated and shared with users. The portal will also permit ENTRO to manage core business processes through an internally facing web interface. Riverside has successfully implemented similar systems addressing organization-wide data management, system integration, and decision support requirements for a variety of organizations including the Nile Basin Initiative, Morocco Economic Competitiveness Program, the State of Colorado, the Nebraska Community Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Completion is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year.

Riverside’s Silver Spring office is moving to a new location. The new office will use the same phone numbers as our current location. The new address is:
1110 Bonifant Street
Suite 500
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(240) 638-3345 (Phone)
(240) 638-3355 (FAX)
The new office will be open on June 21st.
In 2008, Riverside opened an office in Silver Spring supporting its rapidly growing Washington D.C. area customer base and its increasing number of employees working in this area. Since that time, Riverside has maintained a number of its existing federal contracts and has won several new contracts including the NOAA Professional, Scientific, and Technical Next Generation (SCI-TECH NG) contract. For more information on Riverside’s federal government work, visit our federal government page.

The Cooperative Hydrology Study (COHYST) group was formed over a decade ago and consists of several Nebraskan agencies and organizations. The purpose of this group is to work cooperatively “to improve understanding of the hydrological and geological conditions in the Platte Basin in Nebraska upstream of Columbus, Nebraska.” Through this project, Riverside will accurately classify land use at an appropriate spatial resolution so model uncertainty can be minimized and COHYST management objectives can be achieved. By analyzing multiple years, temporal variability also will be captured, and resultant impacts on model outputs can be assessed. Additionally, the developed satellite-based land use classification methodology should be straightforward in its application to allow COHYST staff to analyze additional historical datasets as required. This project provides Riverside another opportunity to extend its commitment to improving water and land resources management in the western United States.

Riverside and its partner Elektrik Üretim ve Mak. San. Tic. A.Ş. (ELITE), a consulting firm in Turkey, were awarded a project to develop a Flood Early Warning System (FEWS) in Istanbul, Turkey. The result of this collaboration will be the implementation of an urban flood warning system called TEUS along pilot creeks in Istanbul using Community Hydrologic Prediction Services/Flood Early Warning System (CHPS/FEWS) software. Implementation will include gage installations at key points, data management, precipitation data processing, hydrologic simulation, warning and alarm dissemination, and links to a website that will provide flood mapping information. Riverside staff members recently returned from the project’s kickoff meeting at AKOM offices, Istanbul’s Municipal Authority and client for this project. At this meeting, Riverside staff members  learned about AKOM’s expectations for  the early warning system, reviewed the weather forecasting, hydrologic, hydraulic and flood mapping models currently utilized at or available to AKOM, discussed AKOM’s experiences with these models, identified available data and data flows, and finalized AKOM’s data dissemination requirements. AKOM personnel, ELITE staff, and Riverside engineers visited the potential forecast points and provided guidance in determining suitable locations for flow monitoring sites.

Implementation is expected to be complete by the first quarter of 2013.

Riverside was recently awarded a project to implement an Integrated Network of Scientific Information and Geo-Hydrologic Tools (INSIGHT) for the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources (NDNR). NDNR is responsible for providing Nebraska citizens with data and analyses to make educated decisions regarding the use and management of natural resources including water. Implementation of INSIGHT will provide NDNR with an organized central location of information that can be analyzed for planning purposes and accessed by the general public. Work for this project includes delivery of a network of hydrologic information, databases of additional hydrologic information, and web-based interactive maps for major river basins. Project kickoff took place in January and completion is scheduled for the third quarter of 2013.

Riverside was highlighted in the NCBR March 9, 2012 issue. Managing water is critical and this article highlights the work that Riverside is doing locally and internationally to help governments and international agencies manage this vital resource.

Read Article.

Riverside and MDA Information Systems, Inc. announced their partnership producing the Weather and Hydrology Information Portal, WHIP. This 24/7 web-based service offers viewers current hydro information providing frequent updates and probabilistic diagrams, reservoir storage diagrams, and soil and snow information.

Riverside and the University of North Carolina Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) announced their partnership leveraging both organizations’ resources in decision support capabilities, geospatial and visualization technology, and weather, climate and hydrology data expertise.

Caleb Erkman was the recipient of the 2012 Riverside Scholarship award at Colorado State University. Caleb is a third year student at CSU majoring in Civil Engineering and Physics. In addition to being a full-time student, Caleb recently spent time in Kosovo as a member of the Water for Life organization collecting water quality data, rehabilitating wells, building water storage tanks and building relationships with members of the village. Congratulations Caleb!

 

Riverside made the ColoradoBiz magazine Top 250 private companies list in 2011, moving up from its rank of 63 for 2010 to 57 in 2011. Over 300 Colorado companies participated. The annual ranking was based on 2010 revenues and was published in the October 2011 issue of ColoradoBiz magazine.

For more information on the Top 250 private companies in Colorado, go to the ColoradoBiz website.

Working with the CWCB in 2006 successfully implementing a prototype Flood Decision Support System (DSS), Riverside partnered with the CWCB in 2010 and developed a flood DSS for entire State of Colorado. Read the article published in the Coloradoan - June 4, 2011 CWCB Flood DSS.

Former Governor Bill Ritter presented Riverside with the Northern Colorado Business Report Environmental Entrepreneur of the year award at the fifth annual NCBR Green Summit. It was the first time a company was recognized for providing engineering solutions in several environmental disciplines including water and climate related issues.

For more information about the NCBR Environmental Entrepreneur award and event highlights, go to the NCBR website.

Riverside was awarded one of three task order contracts to provide Scientific and technical Support Services for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The contract is for 60 months with a maximum contract value of $550M and covers a wide spectrum of objectives related to climate adaptation and mitigation, a weather ready nation, healthy oceans and resilient coastal communities and ecosystems.

Riverside Press Release.

NOAA Press Release.

In September 2007, Riverside was awarded the NOAA TSSEES contract. The contract consists of a 12-month based period, with four additional 12-month option periods. This year, Riverside was awarded option year 3. Through this 5-year, $115 million contract Riverside is providing support and services for NOAA’s operational space systems. These space systems include the current and future National Polar Orbiting Environmental Operational Satellite System (NPOESS) and the next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R) program.