Boulder County RiverTrak® Forecaster Implementation

The City of Boulder, Colorado is located northwest of Denver, Colorado, adjacent to the Rocky Mountains. Downtown Boulder rests at the base of a steep, narrow canyon that leads up into the mountains. Historically, heavy rain and rain on snow events have resulted in flood conditions and danger to businesses and homes adjacent to the river. The Boulder County Sheriff Department, as part of emergency management services in the county, maintains and operates an ALERT data collection network. Climate and streamflow data are automatically transmitted to a central base station. During severe events, emergency managers use this information to respond.

Riverside Technology, inc. was contracted by Boulder County to implement our RiverTrak® Forecaster software for Boulder County. RiverTrak® Forecaster is a stand–alone application that reads data from the ALERT database on a specified interval. RiverTrak® Forecaster processes precipitation and streamflow data to model rainfall–runoff for Boulder Creek and generates a forecast of streamflow based upon existing conditions. A state–space implementation of a Sacramento model with a Kalman filter was implemented on a 10–minute time step. RiverTrak® Forecaster forecasts streamflow at key locations 12 hours into the future. Boulder County Emergency managers run this system continuously and use this information during large storm events to assist in emergency response. At specific river levels, evacuation may be required. In this situation, RiverTrak® Forecaster provides 4 to 6 hours of lead time.

2290 East Prospect Road, Suite 1, Fort Collins, Colorado 80525  (970) 484–7573  (970) 484–7593 Fax www.riverside.com   info@riverside.com