Almost from the start, 2025 has been a banner year in hydrologic modeling, with advancements in capabilities on both sides of the aisle of CIROH's research-to-operations (R2O) pipeline.

• From the research skunkworks, Penn State's MHPI group, led by Dr. Chaopeng Shen introduced a new generation of distributed, differentiable hydrologic models spearheaded by δHBV 2.0. Capable of high-resolution, continental-scale streamflow forecasting across the CONUS Hydrofabric, δHBV 2.0 fuses process-based modeling and machine learning to enable efficient parameter calibration and interpretable predictions at scale -- with demonstrated viability as a National Water Model 3.0 successor.

• Meanwhile, from the operations core, CIROH's Science and Cyberinfrastructure team at the Alabama Water institute (AWI), headed by Arpita Patel and James Halgren, debuted an operational pipeline composed chiefly of flagships NextGen In a Box (NGIAB) and the Next Generation Research Datastream (NRDS), forming an open-source software stack powering an accessible operational implementation of NOAA's Next Generation National Water Model. NRDS, in particular, executes a regularly scheduled set of continental-scale, NextGen-based hydrologic forecasts on CIROH's cloud-based cyberinfrastructure, and is designed to be a canvas for showcasing community modeling advances as potential R2O opportunities for NextGen.

As destined in CIROH, these two efforts converged in early October during a week-long collaboration hosted by AWI, bringing Penn State researcher Leo Lonzarich south to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to join in facilitating the formal introduction of differentiable models like δHBV 2.0 into the NRDS.

Keyboard Accomplishments 👾​

During the visit, the CIROH Science and Cyberinfrastructure team worked with Leo to finalize the formal integration of the δHBV 2.0 model into the NextGen ecosystem. Between extensive code reviews, model refactoring, and validation runs, we verified δHBV 2.0's operations-ready performance through its Basic Model Interface (BMI) within the NextGen runtime, ensuring full compliance with BMI standards and alignment with previously published benchmarks. We enhanced the model to support both batch and sequential timestep simulations — the latter mirroring the runtime behavior of NextGen — while maintaining high computational efficiency and reproducibility across environments.

Once δHBV 2.0 was verified and tuned, we expanded the scope to broader ecosystem integration. The model was finalized on GitHub with modular configuration capabilities, daily and hourly (model coming soon) simulation modes, and confirmed compatibility with the T-route routing component. Significant performance optimizations were implemented to improve scalability across large basin networks. We added δHBV 2.0 support to the NGIAB distribution, enabling cloud-based state loading from AWS S3 (PR coming soon), and extended its reach into the NGIAB Data Preprocess to allow on-demand generation of forcings, static catchment attributes, and model realizations for NextGen. Finally, the static catchment attributes were incorporated into the CIROH Community Hydrofabric, ensuring the model is represented and interoperable within the hydrologic framework used across the consortium.

The beauty of these efforts lies in the fact that δHBV 2.0 is built upon a model-agnostic, differentiable modeling framework — δMG. Therefore, the formalization accomplished during this visit scales to all new research products and advancements made through the framework, streamlining future NGIAB and NRDS integrations and reducing development overhead across projects.

Beyond the Keyboard​

Out of the office, this week also offered opportunities for cross-team engagement and a deeper look into CIROH's computational backbone. In one such case, Leo and the team toured the University of Alabama's data center, meeting with Josh Lotfi and other members of the Office of Information Technology (OIT) who help manage CIROH's on-premises high-performance computing resources. Naturally, this included 1-on-1 time with the flashing lights and silicon of Wukong (which supports a bulk of Penn State's R&D) and Pantarhei HPCs. Across the board, these interactions gave valuable insight into work going on behind the scenes at AWI and about how CIROH's cyberinfrastructure supports researchers and partners across academia, government, and industry.

It is easy to see these collaborations as purely technical exchanges. However, the deep friendships that were built during this visit are at least as important, they inevitably inspire open flows of ideas, mentorship, and future synergies in service of CIROH's mission and the broader community.

Looking Forward​

With δHBV 2.0's integration near completion, differentiable models will soon be running as part of CIROH's NRDS nightly forecasts — accessible through the NRDS Visualizer where other researchers and community members will be able to explore, assess, and iterate on simulations from this latest crop of hydrologic models in real time.

We anticipate continuing this AWI-Penn State collaboration, with future projects e.g., being additions to NGIAB and NRDS including more differentiable models, a formal hourly δHBV 2.0 model, and differentiable routing. Some of this work may also arrive in a DevCon to showcase the efforts of both of groups.

Overall, this visit exemplifies how CIROH's approach to developing a community of practice catalyzes scientific advancements, fosters lasting inter-institutional relationships, and makes normally lab-bound research products salient to the broader R2O community. In these collaborations, CIROH's core mission, strengthening the link between scientific discovery and operational forecasting, remains clear and in view.

Many thanks are owed to Arpita, James, and the whole of CIROH's Science and Cyberinfrastructure team -- git merge on research products has never been easier.

Resources for the Curious​

• δHBV 2.0 Operational Model Repository

• δMG Differentiable Modeling Framework (Backbone for δHBV 2.0; includes documentation and tutorials for building custom differentiable hydrologic models.)

• MHPI Codebase

Publication​

1. Song, Y., Bindas, T., Shen, C., Ji, H., Knoben, W. J. M., Lonzarich, L., et al. (2025). High-resolution national-scale water modeling is enhanced by multiscale differentiable physics-informed machine learning. Water Resources Research, 61, e2024WR038928. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR038928

Meeting Highlights: Transforming Research into Real-World Impact​

Over four days, our community showed how scientific innovation translates into tools and systems that support communities, enhance resilience, and improve decision-making across the nation. From AI advances in water prediction to flood inundation mapping, the presentations and discussions demonstrated the collaborative, open-science approach that defines CIROH.

Reliable and high-resolution streamflow data are essential for hydrologic research, flood forecasting, and water resource management. Streamflow gages provide necessary measurements but can be difficult and expensive to build and operate. Camera-based monitoring offers a promising, non-contact alternative to or augmentation of traditional streamflow gages. However, broad use of camera-based streamflow monitoring has been limited by operational challenges including how to collect, store, manage, and process the large volume of image and video data produced by monitoring cameras.

With help from Arpita Patel and the CIROH Cyberinfrastructure and DevOps Team, who assisted our team with access to Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform, we developed and tested new cyberinfrastructure that advances camera-based hydrologic monitoring.

Traditional dataloggers used in hydrologic monitoring focus on interfacing with conventional sensors (e.g., pressure transducers, float gages, etc.) and lack some capabilities required for camera-based monitoring. Low-cost field computers like the Raspberry Pi provide a capable alternative, but lack out-of-the-box software required to support high-resolution image and video capture, management of the large volume of data that accumulates, data processing, and cloud uploading processes. Because of this, we had to build the functionality required to combine low-cost field computers with cloud computing services to produce an operational, real-time, cloud-integrated, camera-based streamflow monitoring system.

The National Weather Service's Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center (MARFC) sees large variations in the performance of the National Water Model 3.0. Through its support for regionalized parameters and models, NOAA-OWP’s Next Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework (NextGen framework) offers a potential solution to address these inconsistencies. As such, this study took advantage of NextGen in a Box (NGIAB) to evaluate the NextGen framework’s performance in the MARFC region.

This study evaluated three operational hydrologic modeling frameworks targetted at the National Water Model (NWM): the Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS), the NextGen framework, and version 3.0 of the National Water Model itself.

• CHPS is the current operational framework used by NOAA's River Forecast Centers. It incorporates the SNOW-17 model for snowmelt and the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) model for runoff generation.
• For the early phases of this study, the NextGen framework was used with the default model configuration provided by the NGIAB ecosystem, which combines the Noah-OWP-Modular land surface model and the Conceptual Functional Equivalent (CFE) rainfall runoff model [2].
  • After initial runs with the baseline configuration, Noah-OWP-Modular was replaced with SNOW-17 output and simplified Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) values from the MARFC database.
  • The models were calibrated using two objective functions: Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) [6][7] and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) [4][5].
• The National Water Model 3.0 uses the Noah-MP land surface model coupled with the Weather Research and Forecasting Hydrologic model (WRF-Hydro) [2][3] to simulate hydrological processes across CONUS.

The case studies focused on the Westfield and Elkland basins in North-Central Pennsylvania. These basins provide good locations for comparison due to the presence of USGS stream gages and their "flashy" behavior, characterized by rapid and unpredictable rises and falls in streamflow. Additionally, both Westfield and Elkland were sites of catastrophic flooding during Tropical Storm Debby in 2024, which allowed for the models to be evaluated on a recent extreme flood event. Results from Westfield, PA are shown in Figure 1.

Recent collaboration between researchers in the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) from University of Alabama (UA) and Utah State University (USU) highlighted the value of cross-institutional partnerships in improving community hydrologic modeling. Focused on the Logan River watershed, this joint effort demonstrated how sharing tools, knowledge, and infrastructure can accelerate both model development and scientific discovery.

Through this engagement, USU researchers gained deeper understanding of the NextGen framework and T-Route modeling library, empowering them to improve physical process representations for the Logan River watershed for heightened simulation fidelity. The collaboration also provided valuable exposure to the developmental side of complex modeling tools, offering insights into framework design, automation workflows, and best practices for model setup and calibration. Both teams benefited from exposure to alternative research tools and methods, which helped enhance and refine the community development pipeline.

We're thrilled to announce that NextGen In A Box (NGIAB) has surpassed 10,000 Docker pulls — a significant milestone reflecting the growing adoption of water modeling tools that are accessible to all. This achievement creates opportunities for researchers, practitioners, and students worldwide to leverage advanced water prediction frameworks without infrastructure barriers, accelerating global water science innovation.

Update, 8/29: NGIAB Journal Paper now available in Environmental Modelling and Software
→ Read the full paper

From Research Innovation to Community Tool​

When we first containerized the NextGen Water Resources Modeling Framework into NGIAB, our goal was simple yet ambitious: remove the technical barriers that prevented many researchers from accessing NOAA's next-generation water modeling capabilities.

Today, with over 10,000 downloads, it's clear the community was ready for this transformation.

The University of Alabama recently highlighted NGIAB's impact in their news feature, "UA Software Makes Water Modeling More Accessible", recognizing how this tool is changing the landscape of hydrologic research and education. As the article notes, NGIAB turns what was once a complex, infrastructure-heavy process into something that researchers can run on their laptops in minutes.

CIROH team at NHWC 2025 in Tucson, Arizona, standing by the event’s official banner.

CIROH had a strong showing at the 15th Biennial National Hydrologic Warning Conference (NHWC 2025), with our researchers presenting innovative solutions and engaging with the broader hydrologic warning community. The conference brought together field personnel, innovators, engineers, hydrologists, forecasters, water resource managers, and emergency management officials from across the country to advance flood warning systems and address emerging challenges in evolving climate and drought management.

My Experience at Tethys Summit 2025​

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend Tethys Summit 2025 in Tampa, FL. It was a rewarding experience to learn about the Tethys Platform and how researchers, hydrologists, and geospatial scientists are applying it in their work. Through workshops and technical demonstrations, I gained insights into how this open-source Earth science platform is advancing environmental problem-solving.

A screenshot of the HydroShare resource page for Jupyter Notebooks for the Retrieval of AORC Data for Hydrologic Analysis.

The Analysis of Record for Calibration (AORC) dataset is recognized as a high-value resource for the CUAHSI and CIROH community. This dataset is hosted by NOAA via Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is available in two primary formats: a latitude-longitude gridded dataset and the National Water Model (NWM) projected dataset, part of the NWM Retrospective archive. To enhance accessibility and illustrate analysis capabilities, we developed four user-friendly Jupyter Notebooks that enable data retrieval for both specific points of interest and spatial domains defined by shapefiles:

A poster presented by the I-SMART team at the CIROH Developers Conference, held at the University of Vermont in Burlington from May 28 to 30, 2025.

The densely populated Hackensack River watershed lies within the New York City Metropolitan Area, which spans northern New Jersey and southern New York. Accurate streamflow forecasting within this region is therefore essential to enable effective water resource management, flood prediction, and disaster preparedness.

Precipitation data is critical for effective hydrological modeling, making the identification of reliable data sources a key priority. This is why the Integrated Spatial Modeling and Remote Sensing Technologies Laboratory (I-SMART), an interdisciplinary research unit within the Davidson Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, uses the latest developments in both atmospheric and hydrological modeling to address flood risks in the Hackensack Watershed with solutions that could be expanded to the entire New York City Metropolitan Area.

The recent DevCon 2025 event showcased not just cutting-edge development practices, but also demonstrated how modern DevOps principles and cloud infrastructure can seamlessly support large-scale technical workshops. Our team had the privilege of providing IT infrastructure and support for over 200 attendees, creating a robust learning environment through an exemplary public-private partnership.

CIROH's Research Cyberinfrastructure and DevOps team.
Left to right, top to bottom:
Manjila Singh, Arpita Patel, Nia Minor, Trupesh Patel, James Halgren; Benjamin Lee.

Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to co-present a keynote at the CIROH Developers Conference (DevCon 2025), which attracted over 200 attendees. This presentation, which I presented alongside Dan Ames, focused on "CIROH HydroInformatics and Research Cyberinfrastructure." It was a fantastic experience to share insights into the powerful tools and technologies that CIROH engineers, students, researchers have been developing to advance hydrological research and operations.

CIROH-AWI Science and Technology Team.
Left to right: Sagy Cohen, Steven Burian, Manjila Singh, Saide Zand, Savalan N. Neisary, Arpita Patel, Nia Minor, Trupesh Patel, Sifan A. Koriche, Jonathan Frame, Reza S. Alipour, Hari T. Jajula, Chad Perry; Josh Cunningham.

May was a pivotal month for representing the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) and our collective work in advancing water science. As one of CIROH's Ambassadors, I had the privilege of connecting with the broader scientific community at two key events: the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) Congress in Anchorage, Alaska, and the 2025 CIROH Developers Conference in Burlington, Vermont.

Predicting water flow with precision across the vast U.S. landscape is a complex challenge. That's why Song et al. 2024 developed δHBV2.0, a cutting-edge hydrologic model. It’s built with high-resolution modeling of physics to deliver seamless, highly accurate streamflow simulations, even down to individual sub-basins. It's already proven to be a major improvement, performing better than older tools at about 4,000 measurement sites. We also provide a comprehensive 40-year water dataset for ~180,000 river reaches to support this.

Penn State research group pushed δHBV2.0 further, training it with even more detailed river data and integrating other trusted models, aiming to make it a key part of the NextGen national water modeling system (as a potential NWM3.0 successor). But here’s a common hurdle: making powerful scientific tools like this easy and reliable for everyone to use within a larger framework can be tough. Setup issues, runtime errors, and inconsistent results can frustrate users.

NGIAB stepped in to solve exactly this problem. Team has taken the complexity out of using the operations-ready models within NextGen by creating one unified, reliable package. Thanks to NGIAB, users don't have to worry about tricky setups or whether the model will run correctly. NGIAB ensures that our models are compatible everywhere and, most importantly, that they run exactly as designed, consistently and faithfully, every single time, no babysitting required. This means users get the full power of our advanced modeling, without the headaches.

Last week at Google Cloud Next representing our CIROH cloud-based computing efforts! With more than 30,000 participants, Google Next always amazes me! It's huge, engaging on so many levels! Engaging booths, networking opportunities, great presentations, workshops, AI coach for basketball, incredible keynote from an amazing team! Event was not just a conference, but a celebration of innovation and a glimpse into the future of cloud computing! Great to see how Gemini is transforming data manipulation in BigQuery. The ability to use natural language to query, transform, and visualize data is revolutionizing how we interact with massive datasets. Gabe Weiss's demo particularly showcased the potential for non-specialists to derive insights from complex data.

If you missed the keynote, I highly recommend watching the recording here: GCN25 Keynote Video

🌍 AWI News​

The Alabama Water Institute (AWI) at the University of Alabama (UA) recently published an article highlighting how NextGen In A Box (NGIAB) could transform hydrological modeling. This article provides great insight into NGIAB's real-world impact:

• 🚀30-minute setup vs days/weeks of configuration
• 📖 Provo River Basin Case Study demonstrating rapid deployment

➡️ Read the full press release here!

Pennsylvania State University (PSU) researchers have been leveraging CIROH Cyberinfrastructure to tackle complex hydrological modeling challenges. This post highlights their innovative approach using the Wukong computing platform in conjunction with Amazon S3 bucket storage to efficiently process and analyze large-scale environmental datasets. 🚀

AGU24 brought together the world’s leading minds in Earth and space sciences. CIROH participated actively, showcasing advances in water prediction, modeling techniques and many more technologies.

Presentations and Posters 📊​

The conference provided an excellent platform for CIROH researchers to present their groundbreaking work. Our team delivered impactful presentations and poster sessions highlighting CIROH’s innovative work, including advancements in water prediction systems and community water modeling.

These sessions sparked thought-provoking discussions and fostered collaborations with other researchers. For those who missed it, posters and presentation slides are now available here. Feel free to explore these materials and share your thoughts. 📝

The Community NextGen framework has seen significant advancements in November 2024, with major updates across multiple components and exciting new resources for users. Let's dive into the key developments that are making hydrologic modeling more accessible and powerful than ever.

The 2024 CIROH Science Meeting was a huge success, bringing together researchers, federal partners, and consortium members both in person and virtually. We're excited to share the valuable resources from this year's meeting with the wider CIROH community.

Slides and pictures from the various sessions, keynotes, and the Federal Town Hall have all been uploaded to a shared drive for easy access. You can find links to these materials here: Access the Shared Drive with Presentation Slides

Image Source: https://github.com/BYU-Hydroinformatics/api-nwm-gcp

Several important historical and ongoing National Water Model (NWM) datasets are now available on Google Cloud BigQuery, which makes them queryable through SQL using Google Cloud console. Some of these data sets are also accessible through an API (e.g. using Python). These datasets and their current status are as follows:

This month, we are excited to showcase two case studies that utilized our cyberinfrastructure tools and services. These case studies demonstrate how CIROH's cyberinfrastructure is being utilized to support hydrological research and operational advancements.

1. ngen-datastream and NGIAB​

We're excited to share some recent developments and updates from CIROH's Research CyberInfrastructure team:

Cloud Infrastructure​

• CIROH's Google Cloud Account is now fully operational and managed by our team. You can find more information here.
• We're in the process of migrating our 2i2c JupyterHub to CIROH's Google Cloud account.
• We've successfully deployed the Google BigQuery API (developed by BYU and Google) for NWM data in our cloud. To access this API, please contact us at ciroh-it-admin@ua.edu. Please refer to NWM BigQuery API to learn more.

CIROH Developers Conference 2024

The CIROH team recently participated in the 2nd Annual CIROH Developers Conference (DevCon24), held from May 29th to June 1st,2024. The conference brought together a diverse group of water professionals to exchange knowledge and explore cutting-edge research in the field of hydrological forecasting.

AWRA 2024 Spring Conference

The CIROH CyberInfrastructure team recently participated in the AWRA 2024 Spring Conference, co-hosted by the Alabama Water Institute at the University of Alabama.

Themed "Water Risk and Resilience: Research and Sustainable Solutions," the conference brought together a diverse group of water professionals to exchange knowledge and explore cutting-edge research in the field.

Google Cloud Next '24

Hello everyone, and thanks for stopping by!

I recently had the incredible opportunity to attend Google Cloud Next 2024 in person for the first time, and it was truly an amazing experience. From insightful keynote presentations and workshops to vibrant booths buzzing with connections, the event was a whirlwind of innovation and inspiration.

The CIROH team has been diligently accelerating research cyberinfrastructure capabilities this month. We're thrilled to share key milestones achieved in enhancing the Community NextGen project and our cloud/on-premises platforms.

Welcome to the February edition of the CIROH DocuHub blog, where we bring you the latest updates and news about the Community NextGen project and CIROH's Cloud and on-premise Infrastructure.

Our team has been hard at work enhancing CIROH's Infrastructure and Community NextGen tools. Here are some highlights from February 2024:

1. We successfully launched our new On-premises Infrastructure, which is now fully operational. You can find documentation for it here.

Welcome to the January edition of the CIROH DocuHub blog, where we share the latest updates and news about the Community NextGen project monthly. NextGen is a cutting-edge hydrologic modeling framework that aims to advance the science and practice of hydrology and water resources management. In this month's blog, we will highlight some of the recent achievements and developments of the Community NextGen team.

Happy New Year!!! We are back from SFO after attending AGU last month. We are excited to share the latest updates for NGIAB, NextGen, T-route, Hydrofabric, NextGen forcings, and Community Support from December 2023.

Visit NGIAB News

We've released NGIAB v1.1.0! This release fixes issues:

• #21
• #67
• #44

More info: https://github.com/CIROH-UA/NGIAB-CloudInfra/releases/tag/v1.1.0

Visit NGIAB News

We are excited to share the latest updates for NGIAB, NextGen, T-route, Hydrofabric, NextGen forcings and Community Support.

Visit NGIAB News

We've introduced a fresh addition within DocuHub, offering the most up-to-date insights on NGIAB and NextGen monthly updates.

Visit NGIAB Release Notes Page

NextGen Framework Forcings​

A new forcing processor tool has been made public. This tool converts any National Water Model based forcing files into ngen forcing files. This process can be an intensive operation in compute, memory, and IO, so this tool facilitates generating ngen input and ultimately makes running ngen more accessible.