Ian Maycumber

Ian Maycumber is a water resources engineer whose work focuses on leveraging environmental data, models, and systems to improve decision-making for global water challenges. He has broad experience supporting domestic and international clients in hydraulic and hydrologic model development, hydrologic forecasting systems, forensic hydrology, and hydro-meteorological network design.

Most recently, Mr. Maycumber been focused on the development of building real-time hydrologic forecasting systems for commercial and government entities around the world. These systems integrate hydro-meteorological data and modeling to forecast streamflow or reservoir inflows for real-time decision support. The benefits of these systems include improving reservoir operations to mitigate flooding; achieve environmental flows; manage long-term water supply; and optimize hydropower operations; all of which become increasingly important and difficult to manage from the impacts of climate change. Every hydrologic forecast system has its unique challenges, but Mr. Maycumber enjoys the partnership of collaboratively building a system with the client and project team, while also leveraging the lessons learned from past forecast systems. Although technically challenging to build, the biggest value RTI offers in these projects is the training and capacity development for end users to fully take ownership to sustainably operate and maintain their systems for the long term future.

In addition to his project work, Mr. Maycumber also serves as a staff manager and business development lead. As a staff manager, Mr. Maycumber most enjoys pairing the interests of his staff with future opportunities for their professional growth as individuals and the team in the Center for Water Resources.