The Bureau of Reclamation is looking to artificial intelligence to better answer one of the most pressing questions in the West: How much water is available?
Upstream Tech recently signed a $680,000 contract with the Interior Department to improve what are known as “short-term probabilistic forecasts,” or estimates for how much water will flow from streams and rivers into reservoirs over a 10-day period. The company will use a machine-learning model, a subset of AI, to boost the accuracy and scope of water models.
“The better knowledge we have of what’s yet to come, the better decisions we can make to allocate water,” said Chris Frans, the water availability research coordinator in Reclamation’s Research and Development Office.
More accurate forecasts, both for short- and long-term water supplies, could prove key in basins where climate change is altering seasonal flows or triggering aridification. Such changes have led to complications in multistate agreements that divide the flows of many major rivers like the Colorado and the Rio Grande.
