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Hydroinformatics Projects

UIHILab Projects

Selected research and educational projects from our research group are listed below:


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Web-based Geospatial Platform for Analysis and Forecasting of Sedimentation at Culverts

The “Iowa DOT Culverts” platform aims at informing on the potential for inception and development of sedimentation at culverts. Insights provided through the data-driven framework can be applied to support decisions for culvert management and sedimentation mitigation, as well as to provide suggestions on parameter selections for the design of these structures.

[project website]

Routing and Accessibility Analysis System For Flooding

In this study, a generalized routing and accessibility analysis system is developed for flooding events. The system helps people find alternative routes and understand which areas in the disaster zone have limited travel accessibility. Our system can support emergency response activities with a real-time and dynamic routing framework for evacuation, rescuing civilians, delivering supplies, and deciding emergency center placement.

[project website]

Iowa Well Forecasting System

The Iowa Well Forecasting System provides a user-friendly and interactive system for forecasting aquifer depths using historic well depth information.

[project website]

HSEMD Data Analytics and Visualization Framework

A new data analytics framework is developed for Homeland Security & Emergency Management Department for historical hazard mitigation and public assistance project datasets.

[project website]

Crowdsourcing Water Monitoring with Citizen Science

The goals of the Citizen Science project are determining a mobile app’s ability to accurately monitor water quality throughout a watershed, assessing user interest and engagement in using a mobile app for water quality monitoring, and helping stakeholders identify “hot spots” for potential implementation of water-quality improvement projects.

[project website]

Flood AI Alpha: Artificial Intelligence for Flood Preparedness

IFIS Knowledge Engine is a computational engine to provide answers to questions grouped into several categories using comprehensive set of tools and data resources available in IFIS. IFIS Knowledge Engine connects to distributed sources of real-time stream gauges, and in-house data sources, analysis and visualization tools.

[project website]

Flood Damage and Loss Analysis on an Interactive Web-based System

This web-based tool is aimed to provide a web-based interactive flood damage and loss estimation platform utilizing HAZUS and Census datasets.

[project website]

Flood Action VR

This projects presents a Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Go application that regenerates real world and weather conditions worldwide to increase disaster awareness and to prepare responders by employing gamification techniques.

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Virtual Sensor - Crowdsourced Stage Measurement

This project presents a novel method and an AR-based mobile application to accurately measure water levels using smartphones.

[project website]

Iowa Watershed Approach Information System (IWAIS)

he Iowa Watershed Approach (IWA) is a vision for Iowa’s future that voluntarily engages stakeholders throughout the watershed to achieve common goals, while moving toward a more resilient state.

[project website]

Decision Support Tool for the Texas Multi-Hazard Tournament

The web-based MHT described here is different from conventional decision-making approaches where everyone works on the solution together.

[project website]

IowaDSS: Collaborative Decision-Support System for Multi-Hazard Mitigation

We have developed a prototype DSS used for a Multi-Hazard Tournament (MHT) organized by the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Institute for Water Resources in the state of Iowa (U.S.A.).

[project website]

Crowdsourcing Water Quality Monitoring with Smartphones

his project includes utilization of smartphones for monitoring water quality. Volunteers use a nitrate test strip and quantify the environmental variable using a smartphone camera. The data will be send instantly to a central server to visualize and share using a web-based interface and Iowa Water Quality Information System (IWQIS).

[project website]

Holographic Flood Loss and Damage Application

An interactive holographic application is developed to visualize cities in 3D structure during flooding with flood loss and damage estimates from HAZUS datasets for individual buildings.

[project website]

Clear Creek Watershed Information System

We developed an integrated platform, along with properly embedded interfaces, that allows users who lack specialized computer skills to test alternative land-use changes, explore and compare socio-economic analyses, and gauge public action-reaction.

[project website]

Hydrology@Home: A Distributed Voluntary Computing Framework

A generic web-based distributed voluntary computing framework with the aim of easing scientific computing tasks.

[project website]

Mobile Museum - Interactive Digital Exhibit

Interactive rainfall, water flow, watershed delineation, and inundation simulators are created to bring cutting-edge hydrological research to Iowa's commmunities statewide.

[project website]

Overhead Power Line Sag Monitoring through Augmented Reality

This project presents a novel and inexpensive method for overhead power line sag monitoring using augmented reality and image recognition.

[project website]

An Information-Centric Flood Ontology

This project presents an information-centric comprehensive flood ontology that can be utilized in cyberinfrastructure systems for natural hazard preparedness, monitoring, response and recovery.

[project website]

Client-Side GPGPU Web Application for Catchment Delineation

A client-side GPGPU (General Purpose Graphical Processing Unit) algorithm to analyze high-resolution terrain data for watershed delineation which allows parallelization using GPU is developed.

[project website]

NASA SMAP Information System

A field experiment is conducted in Iowa by NASA in collaboration with Iowa Flood Center during the spring of 2016 for SMAP Satellite mission. A web-based interface is developed to integrate data and resources for NASA SMAP satellite mission field campaign in Iowa with rich spatial layers on a map interface. 

[project website]

Big Sioux River Flood Information System (BSRFIS)

The Big Sioux River Flood Information System (BSRFIS) provides a user-friendly and interactive platform for Big Sioux River regarding flood conditions, flood forecasts and flood-related data, information and applications.

[project website]

Google Glass Flood Alert Mixed Reality Application

We have imagined how heads up displays can affect our interactions with environmental information, and what we can do with a Google Glass (#ifihadglass) with flood related data and information. Here is a prototype design for a Google Glass Flood App with real-time flood warning and road conditions.

[project website]

Big Data Analytics Using Social Media

A cloud computing infrastructure for acquisition, processing and analyzing social media feeds in real-time for improving flood monitoring and prediction, and supporting flood preparedness, recovery and response. The project utilizes latest web technologies, cloud computing, natural language processing and machine intelligence techniques.

[project website]

Realistic Flood Visualizer

A web-based 3D visualization system is developed for generating realistic flood scence for any location in Iowa.

[project website]

Hydrological Simulation System with VR and AR

A web-based virtual and augmented reality application for simulation of hydrological system using desktop markers and camera via WebRTC and WebGL technologies.

[project website]

Disdrometer Visualization Interface

A web-based interface for visualizing drop size and velocity of rain drops using disdrometer data in real-time for NASA IFLOODS Project.

[project website]

Augmented Reality Layers for Iowa

Augmented Reality (AR) combines real world and simulated information or reality in real-time to enhance perception of reality. Several augmented reality layers are created for the Iowa Flood Center bridge sensor data, and data sources in IFIS. These layers are accessible within the Augmented Reality application, LAYAR, for android and iOS devices.

[project website]

3D Interactive Book about IFIS

A web-based 3D interactive children's book is designed about IFIS and hydrological concepts for educational purposes.

[project website]

UCF CHAMPS Hydrologic Information System

A web-based information system on coastal inundation and modeling data, information and visualizations.

[project website]

Interactive Streamflow Visualization Interface

A web-based interface is developed for visualization of stream flow data on Google Maps using HTML 5 and canvas.

[project website]

NASA IFLOODS Information System

A web-based interface is developed to integrate data and resources for NASA Iowa Flood Studies experiment with rich spatial layers on a map interface.

[project website]

NASA IFLOODS Planning Tool

A web-based interface is developed for positioning radars and rainfall instruments with adjustable range and location, watersheds, and rich spatial layers on a map interface.

[project website]

Flood Inundation Map Flight Simulator

A real-time web-based flight simulator is developed for navigating over the flood inundation map of Des Moines, Iowa. The web-based interface utilizes Google Earth and Google Maps API and allows users to control a helicopter of the flood map using arrow keys. A recent update allows users to control the helicopter using their iOS devices (iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch).

[project website]

Flood Simulator Game

A web-based flood simulator game is developed to teach flood related concepts interactively. The web-based interface utilizes HTML 5 and Canvas and allows users to control a block using mouse or arrow keys to protect city from flooding.

[project website]

Rainfall and Flood Forecast Simulation

A real-time web-based simulation is developed in 2D and 3D using HTML 5 and Canvas for rainfall and flood forecast for Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The web-based interface simulates 552 hours of rainfall and flood conditions in 15 minutes intervals for 8436 spatial locations on the map.

[project website]

Real-time Watershed Delineator

A web-based interface for generating watershed for any location in Iowa.

[project website]

Real-time Rainfall Drainage Tracker

A visualization interface for real-time rainfall drainage tracker is developed. Users are able to click on any location in Iowa and see how a single rain drop drains to the outlet.

[project website]

Rainfall Data Browser

An interactive rainfall data browser is developed for visualizing and browsing real-time and historical rainfal products generated using HYDRO NEXRAD radar data including HRAP, Q2, IFC and HUC 0708. The interface allows users to visualize selected rainfall products, navigate and zoom to areas of interest using mapping interface, and browse through multiple meta-data to identify certain characteristics of the products.

[project website]

Level II Radar Data Browser

An interactive radar raw data browser is developed for visualizing and browsing real-time and historical HYDRO NEXRAD data. The interface allows users to visualize the full volume scan from radar, and vertical and horizontal sectors from the 3D volume scan. Mapping interface allows users to navigate in the spatial domain and zoom to areas of interest.

[project website]

Fund-A-Sensor Initiative

The FUND-A-SENSOR project was established by the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) to crowd-fund stream sensors to improve flood monitoring in Iowa. IFC has already deployed 121 sensors, and is receiving stream levels in real-time, and sharing the data with the public through the Iowa Flood Information System.

[project website]

IFIS Knowledge Engine

IFIS Knowledge Engine is a computational engine to provide answers to questions grouped into several categories using comprehensive set of tools and data resources available in IFIS. IFIS Knowledge Engine connects to distributed sources of real-time stream gauges, and in-house data sources, analysis and visualization tools. The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is a web-based platform with advanced data integration components, analysis and modeling tools, map layers, and rich geo-spatial visualization interfaces.

[project website]

Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS)

The Iowa Flood Information System (IFIS) is a web platform developed by the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) at the University of Iowa. IFIS provides a user-friendly and interactive environment for over 500 communities in Iowa regarding flood conditions, flood forecasts, data visualizations, and flood-related data, information and applications.

[project website]

Global Water Platform (GWP)

The Global Water Platform is developed to (i) make advanced use of information technology to promote information-sharing and collaboration; (ii) provide global leadership in sustainable water use; and (iii) increase awareness of sustainability implications of all water-related programs and activities.

[project website]

Georgia Watershed Information Systems (GWIS)

The Georgia Watershed Information System (GWIS) is a comprehensive online system to manage, access, visualize and analyze large amounts of water quality data and information. GWIS will provide a platform for integration of state-wide efforts in environmental information collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination to all concerned. GWIS provides several data management, modeling, visualization, mapping and resources tools for watersheds.

[project website]