Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
Q ..
NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration]?
A ..
NASA. They got the information they had to convert it so that it would come up on the
computer in the proper format and all that. But, finally, the Corps got their own satellite
receiving stations. We started getting some of our own wherever we had water control
centers.
The Lower Mississippi Valley Division had their own receiving station, and they had that
big antennae on top of the division office, a directional antennae so they could receive the
information. They had the equipment to transfer the information into a usable format. But
they were one of the first ones that had their own besides the New England Division.
But they were pretty expensive to begin with. Each one of those stations were very
expensive. As time went on, they became less and less expensive. In some cases, there
were a few agencies that were sharing a downlink, what they called the downlink, where
they got all this information. It's great for all kinds of information. For example, in dam
safety, you can put sensors on dams so that if there's any movement to the dam it could
be relayed through a satellite back to a central point.
They can keep track of a gauge so if there's any movement at all, why they'll notice it.
Not only do they have the information at the station, they can put some sort of a threshold
device on it so that if there's a movement over a certain amount it'll ring bells or set off
alarms or something so that somebody will immediately notice it. They're not probably
paying any attention to it. They're not going to just sit there and look at it all the time.
So that something like that you almost need an alert device.
Whereas things like rainfall and temperature like that, why they go in and take the
recording off every so often, especially if they know about a storm in a particular vicinity,
why they're right there getting all the information. From the rainfall, they have runoff
models for watersheds, knowing the rainfall and putting that rainfall into their runoff
models, then they can predict how much of a flood is going to come down particular rivers
and what their water surface might be in an urban area, that sort of thing.
Q ..
So it makes it a lot easier to conduct flood fights?
A ..
Oh yes. It gives you a better chance to operate your projects more efficiently so that
you'll know what's coming and what's on the ground. You know what rain is on the
ground.
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