The 20th RiverWare User Group Meeting, held on February 5-6, 2025, brought together 135 water management professionals and researchers from 52 organizations spanning federal, state, and local agencies, utilities, consulting firms, and research institutions. This year’s event showcased innovative applications of RiverWare, a leading modeling tool for water resource management, with a focus on optimization, collaboration, and policy advancements.

Presentations highlighted a diverse range of case studies, from optimizing reservoir storage solutions to cross-border water agreements ensuring mutual benefits for multiple nations. Attendees also explored how RiverWare is used for post-dam removal flow studies and risk mitigation strategies, reflecting the software’s evolving role in addressing global water challenges.

The RiverWare research and development team at the Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES) unveiled upcoming software enhancements and new analytical tools. The meeting fostered an interactive format, engaging both in-person and online participants. The final session encouraged user feedback, sparking discussions on future enhancements to keep RiverWare at the forefront of water resource modeling.

Held approximately every 18 months, the RiverWare User Group Meeting continues to be a vital forum for collaboration and knowledge-sharing in the water management community. Meeting agendas and presentation materials from this and past events are available online for those interested in exploring the latest advancements in RiverWare applications 

Off

We are excited to announce the next major release of RiverWare, version 9.4. Details of the release topics and links to the full release notes are on the To hear and see more about these new enhancements and creative uses of the tools, attend the 2025 RiverWare February 5&6, 2025.

Off

At this year’s Clean Currents conference in Portland, OR CADSWES industry expert Tim Magee delivered a compelling presentation titled “System-Level Hydropower Flexibility” on October 9. Magee’s talk explored the critical role of hydropower flexibility within a growing and increasingly diverse energy grid. His presentation introduced innovative "flexibility charts" and metrics designed to assess hydropower systems at scale, a breakthrough approach that promises to reshape visual and numerical evaluations of flexibility across different reservoirs and systems. Clean Currents 2024, held from October 7–10, remains the leading event for the waterpower industry, bringing together insights and advancements that address pressing challenges in sustainable energy.

For more details, visit Clean Currents:

Abstract
The inherent flexibility of hydropower units is known to be valuable for both power producers and the larger power grid because many other power sources are less flexible, and some sources are not dispatchable. These limitations of other power sources and their growing use means that fully taking advantage of hydropower flexibility is more important than ever.
Our work with operational models that cover 1/3 of the U.S. hydropower fleet and our prior flexibility research informs our opinion that the flexibility of individual units often does not translate to system level flexibility because of other constraints at the plant and system level, often reflecting the multi-purpose use of reservoirs, mismatched hydropower plant sizes, lag times between reservoirs, and many other factors. From a power perspective, there is an important and open need to assess actual system level flexibility both visually and numerically.
We present new “flexibility charts” to visualize system-level hydropower flexibility and flexibility metrics derived from these charts. These charts and metrics provide a basis to make a variety of visual and numerical comparisons: different reservoirs, different systems, different policies, different conditions, etc. The flexibility charts generalize the concept of the average utilization factor for a hydropower plant over a period of time to a system of reservoirs, We motivate and illustrate flexibility charts with multiple plant examples. We also differentiate between theoretical, optimal, and observed flexibility charts and metrics.
 

Off

We are excited to announce the latest release of RiverWare and RiverSMART, version 9.3.

Highlights of the release include:

• A new Settings Manager to centralize settings, including functionality for searching and filtering to find the desired setting.
• Support for multiple Multi-Windows and improved docking functionality within the Multi-Window.
• A new MRM Data Extractor Tool that pulls data out of models saved via Multiple Run Management.
• New Multiple Statistic analysis in the Ensemble Data Tool (EDT) and the ability to create shaded percentile curves as shown in the image.
• New statistical slot options for exceedance calculations and distribution fitting.
• Improved Export Copy options for data in slots and SCTs.
• New RPL functions and operators for LIST computations.
• Improvements to the scripting interfaces and script variable options.
• A new RiverSMART Batch Mode allowing scenario simulations through a batch script.
• Many bug and issue fixes.

Please see the for more details about version 9.3.

Off

Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, Deputy Commissioner David Polumbo and other officials from the Colorado River Basin (CRB) visited CADSWES on June 5 for a special celebratory luncheon and award ceremony to honor the Bureau of Reclamation team stationed at CADSWES for their contributions to the ongoing process to determine the future management of the CRB.

11 of the Reclamation employees stationed at CADSWES received a certificate of recognition from the Commissioner for their efforts and accomplishments in this important process. CADSWES Director Dr. Edie Zagona provided a brief history of the close collaboration between Reclamation and CADSWES over the past 35 years in innovating the approaches and decision support tools that have supported the government’s successes in managing the Colorado River and numerous other river basins. “Another great outcome of this collaboration has been the many graduate students who have contributed to the science during their academic experience and are now leaders at Reclamation and other organizations in the global water management community,” Zagona said.

Off

Professor Joseph Kasprzyk, Senior Research staff David Neumann, and Ph.D. student Madeline Pernat presented recent research and development results at the ASCE World Environmental & Water Resources (EWRI) conference May 19 – 22.  All in the Water Resources Modeling, Management and Policy sessions, and Kasprzyk and Pernat also participated in the session on Advances in Streamflow Forecasting at Hourly to Seasonal Scales Under Current Climate and/or Changing Climate.

Titles with links to the authoring information and presentation abstracts are below:

Kasprzyk and Pernat

Kasprzyk

Neumann

Off

Edie Zagona was part of a ���������� team for the USAID’s Improved Water Resources Management for Sustainable Economic Growth in Armenia program. She presented "Water Resources Management: Objectives, Technologies and Best Practeces" to faculty and students. More about the week long trip in May 2024 is available here   .

Off

A delegation of five high ranking professionals from the Nile Water Sector, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in Egypt visited CADSWES on May 15, during their trip to the United States for the project “Climate Change Impact on Egypt’s Water Scarcity.” The goal was to gain information on ways to negotiate challenges they are facing in their water management community. They had previously learned of uses of our RiverWare software tools and were excited for the opportunity to come to CADSWES and meet with Dr. Edith Zagona and learn more. Mitch Clement, David Neumann, and Edie Zagona gave them presentations about potential tool uses.

The US visit was organized by the Department of State and the Boulder Council for International Visitors (BCIV), who provided them with international liaisons/interpreters.

Delegation members:

Mr. Alaaeldin Mabrouk KOTB, Meteorologist, Nicle Forecasting Centre

Mr. Mohamed Khaled MEHANNA, Senior Engineer

Mr. Amgad Salaheldin MOHAMED, Senior Engineer

Mr. Mostafa Ahmed SAYED, Assistant Minister for Nile Water

Ms. Sara Mohamed ZOURIQ, Technical Officer

Off

Balaji Rajagopalan and a several colleagues analyzed Colorado River data from a suite of models. Their study accounts for both rising temperatures as well as predicted precipitation and it appears that the river’s future may be more positive than recently anticipated. Their findings were published in the Journal of Climate with the American Meteorological Society. More about the study is on the CIRES website

Off

PhD student Madeline Pernat received a 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GFRP) for the research she is doing on the Colorado River Basin, with advisors Joseph Kasprzyk and Edie Zagona, and the Bureau of Reclamation. See more about the award and the research here. Congratulations to Maddy!

Off