Skip to Main Content

RTI uses cookies to offer you the best experience online. By and clicking “accept” on this website, you opt in and you agree to the use of cookies. If you would like to know more about how RTI uses cookies and how to manage them please view our Privacy Policy here. You can “opt out” or change your mind by visiting: http://optout.aboutads.info/. Click “accept” to agree.

Accept
RTI International
  • About
    • Office Locations
    • Executive Leadership
    • Corporate Governance
    • Partner with Us
      • U.S. Government
      • Clients and Funding Agencies
      • Industry and Commercial Clients
      • Foundations and Associations
      • Bilateral Agencies and Multilateral Banks
      • Universities and Academic Research Institutions
      • Suppliers and Small Businesses
    • Commitment to Quality
      • RTI's Client Listening Program
    • Ethics and Human Research Protection
    • Living Our Mission
    • Veteran Opportunities at RTI

    About

  • Practice Areas
    • Health
      • Public Health and Well-Being
      • Health Care Transformation
      • Behavioral Health
      • Health Behavior Change
      • Precision Medicine
      • RTI Health Solutions (RTI-HS)
      • RTI Center for Community Health Evaluation and Economics Research
      • Health Equity
    • Transformative Research Unit for Equity​
      • Equity Capacity Building Hub
      • Social and Economic Justice Research Collaborative
      • Narrative Research and Community Engagement Lab
    • Education and Workforce Development
      • Early Childhood
      • K-12 Education
      • Postsecondary Education
      • Career and Adult Education and Workforce Development
      • Education Policy, Systems, and Governance
      • Education Research Methodologies
      • Education Technologies
    • International Development
      • Energy for Development
      • Environment
      • Global Food Security, Agriculture, and Nutrition
      • Global Health
      • Governance
      • International Education
      • Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, Learning, and Adapting (MERLA)
      • Youth and Economic Opportunity
      • Building Resilience Against COVID-19 in Developing Countries
      • Water
    • Climate Change
      • Clean Energy Technology and Renewables
      • Climate Finance
      • Climate Justice and Equity
      • Climate Planning, Preparedness and Resilience
      • Climate Policy
      • Climate Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Mitigation
      • Economic Impacts of Climate Change
    • Water
      • Food-Energy-Water Nexus
      • Water Quality
      • Water Sector Governance
      • Urban Sanitation
      • Water Service Provider Strengthening
      • Water Resources Management
    • Energy Research
      • Carbon Capture and Utilization
      • Biomass Conversion
      • Natural Gas
      • Energy Efficiency
      • Industrial Water
      • Syngas Processing
    • Environmental Sciences
      • Air Quality
      • RTI Center for Water Resources
      • Urban Sustainability
      • Toxics
      • Climate Change
      • Building Resiliency in the FEW Nexus
      • Climate Change Sciences and Analysis
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Justice
      • Sustainable Materials & Waste Management Solutions
    • Justice Research and Policy
      • RTI Center for Community Safety and Crime Prevention
      • RTI Center for Policing Research and Investigative Science
      • Child Well-Being and Family Strengthening
      • RTI Center for Forensic Sciences
    • Food Security and Agriculture
      • Market Systems Strengthening
      • Food Safety
      • Food and Nutrition
      • Global Food Security, Agriculture, and Nutrition
      • Climate-Smart Agriculture
      • Youth in Agriculture
      • Agricultural Innovation
      • Obesity Prevention
    • Innovation Ecosystems
      • Innovation Advising
      • Innovation for Economic Growth
      • Innovation for Emerging and Developing Economies
      • Innovation for Organizations
      • Research, Technology, and Innovation Policy
      • Technology Acceleration
    • Military Support
      • Military Behavioral Health
      • Military Health and Human Performance
      • Military Sexual Assault, Harassment, and Domestic Violence Prevention

    Practice Areas

  • Services + Capabilities
    • Surveys and Data Collection
      • Survey Design
      • Instrument Development
      • Survey Methodologies
      • Data Collection
      • Establishment Surveys
      • Health Registries
      • Data Analysis and Reporting
      • Research Operations Center
    • Statistics and Data Science
      • Survey Statistics
      • Environmental Statistics
      • Coordinating Centers for Multisite Studies
      • Analysis and Design of Complex Data
      • Biostatistics
      • RTI Center for Data Science
    • Evaluation, Assessment and Analysis
      • Evaluation Design and Execution
      • Advanced Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods
      • Evaluation, Monitoring, and Assessment
      • Economic Analysis
      • Evaluating Communication Interventions and Campaigns
      • Evidence Synthesis for Policy and Practice
      • Risk Assessment and Prediction
    • Program Design and Implementation
      • Systems Strengthening and Scaling
      • Capacity Assessment and Building
      • Policy Reform Support
      • Curriculum and Teacher Professional Development
      • Interventions and Prevention Programs
      • Implementation Science
    • Digital Solutions for Social Impact
      • Human-Centered Design of Digital Solutions
      • Digital Product Development
      • Digital Communication Campaigns
      • Digital Data Analytics
    • Research Technologies
      • Survey Technologies
      • Data Management and Decision Support Systems
      • Geospatial Science, Technology, and Visualization
      • ICT for Limited-Resource Settings
      • Mobile Applications
      • Web Applications
      • Bioinformatics
    • Drug Discovery and Development
      • Medicinal Chemistry
      • Molecular Design and Cheminformatics
      • Behavioral Pharmacology
      • Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK)
      • In Vitro Pharmacology, Bioassay Development, and High-Throughput Screening (HTS)
      • Isotope Labeling
      • Regulatory Consulting and Support for Medical Products
    • Analytical Laboratory Sciences
      • Bioanalytical and Toxicology Research
      • Forensic Sciences
      • Physicochemical Characterizations
      • Metabolomics
      • Proficiency Testing and Reference Materials
      • Quality Assurance and Regulatory Compliance
      • Microbiology
      • Analytical Chemistry and Pharmaceutics
    • Engineering & Technology R&D
      • Biomedical Technologies
      • Decarbonization Sciences
      • Environmental Exposure & Protection
      • Materials & Environment
      • Sustainable Energy Solutions

    Services + Capabilities

  • Centers
    • RTI Center for Advanced Methods Development
    • RTI Center for Communication Science
      • Communication Research
      • Communication Design
      • Communication Delivery
    • RTI Center for Data Science
    • RTI Center for Education Services
      • Teaching and Learning
      • Education Leadership
      • Peer Learning Networks
      • Strategic Consulting
    • RTI Center for Forensic Sciences
    • RTI Center for Global Noncommunicable Diseases
      • Program Financing & Economics for NCDs
      • Health Systems Strengthening for NCDs
      • Communication Science and Behavior Change for NCDs
      • Implementation Science for NCDs
    • RTI Center for Newborn Screening, Ethics, and Disability Studies
      • Disability Studies
      • Ethics
      • Newborn Screening
    • RTI Center for Water Resources
      • Water Resources Sectors
      • Water Resources Services
      • Water Resources Tools
    • RTI Global Gender Center
    • North Carolina Center for Optimizing Military Performance
    • NCCU-RTI Center for Applied Research in Environmental Sciences
    • RTI Center for Climate Solutions

    Centers

  • Impact
    • Newsroom
    • Insights Blog
    • Events
    • Publications
    • RTI Press
      • About the RTI Press
      • Instructions for Authors
      • RTI Press Collections
    • Projects
    • Global Reach
      • Asia
      • Eastern Europe and Central Asia
      • RTI International India
      • Africa
      • Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
      • Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

    Impact

  • Experts
    • Our Experts
    • In-Depth With Our Experts
    • Related News
    • Experts In the Media
    • RTI Fellow Program

    Experts

  • Emerging Issues
    • COVID-19 Research
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Global Health Security
    • Cannabis Research
    • Opioid Research
      • Interventions for Opioid Use Disorders
      • Preventing Opioid Misuse and Overdose
      • Treating Opioid Use Disorders
    • Policing Research and Investigative Science
    • Drone Research and Application
    • E-cigarette Research
    • Zika Virus Research
    • Integrated Governance

    Emerging Issues

  • COVID-19 Research + Response
  • Global Reach
  • Insights Blog
  • Newsroom
  • RTI Press
  • Publications
  • Partner With Us
  • Careers
  • Facebook IconTwitter IconInstagram IconYouTube IconLinkedin Icon
Impact

Technical Support for the Tennessee Valley Authority

  • Home
  • Impact
  • Technical Support for the Tennessee Valley Authority

Modernizing climate, weather, and water services for nation’s largest regional planning agency

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) pursues its mission to improve the lives of the people in the Tennessee Valley by providing affordable electricity and environmental stewardship. TVA River Management is responsible for providing electricity to more than nine million people in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. TVA manages more than 40 dams and three nuclear power facilities in the Tennessee Valley to supply this power, and, as a result, dam safety and risk mitigation are critical aspects of its mission.

TVA River Management is responsible for the operation of the reservoir system to meet hydropower, flood control, water supply, recreation, and navigation needs. The TVA Dam Safety program mitigates risks related to extreme flooding, dam operations, and dam failures.

Facing such a daunting list of crucial responsibilities, the TVA relies on collaboration with proven partners to ensure the safety of its constituents and the protection of energy and environmental resources.

Pursuing Operating Policy and Operational Forecast System Enhancements

The RTI Center for Water Resources (CWR), has been working with TVA since 2002. We have helped modernize the tools TVA uses for operational decision-making to improve the water services provided to the region.

Our first project was to assess how modification of TVA’s reservoir operating policies would impact flood risk, hydropower revenues, navigation, water supply and quality, and recreational activities across the Tennessee River watershed. We performed reservoir modeling and flood frequency analysis for 36 reservoirs within the Tennessee basin using the University of Colorado’s RiverWare® river basin model system. Through our work, TVA identified a variety of modifications to their previous operating policy that allowed better use of the available water resources.

TVA also sought support to enhance its operational forecasting responsibilities, which include data collection and quality control, hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, reservoir operation simulation and optimization, and hydrothermal modeling. In 2012, following discussions with RTI, TVA decided to upgrade their current forecasting system to the Delft Flood Early Warning System (FEWS) platform. We completed a pilot implementation by updating their operational rainfall estimation processing and configuring hydrologic models for a subset of the TVA system within the FEWS framework.

As a result of the success of the pilot FEWS implementation, RTI worked closely with TVA and Deltares, the developer of FEWS, to transition the remainder of their operational forecasting system to the FEWS platform. RTI implemented data imports and quality control tools, integrated hydrologic and hydraulic models, supported the RiverWare optimization model integration, and applied tabular, graphical, and spatial displays to support TVA’s decision-making.

An important aspect of TVA’s forecast system modernization involved the development of improved hydrologic and hydraulic models. We coordinated with TVA and the National Weather Service to complete the calibration of the models, which now better simulate natural flows in the system compared to the legacy models. Now, the organization has access to more accurate forecasts of reservoir system inflows that allow for improved release planning by the TVA river schedulers and can rapidly assess the impacts of high flows along the river using operational hydraulic models.

Bolstering TVA’s Emergency Management and Risk Mitigation Capabilities

Our team also provides essential support and analyses to improve TVA’s emergency management tools and risk mitigation. From 2013-2015, we provided Emergency Action Plan inundation mapping using HEC-RAS and GIS mapping tools to produce updated inundation maps for the postulated failure of 40 dams. The model incorporated information from more than 30 existing models or sources, resulting in a comprehensive hydraulic model that encompasses more than 1,900 river miles and every major reservoir in the TVA system. In 2016 we developed a system to help automate computation of the Probable Maximum Flood at dams in the TVA system, allowing efficient assessment of risks for the dams and nuclear facilities.

Since 2013, CWR has led two major efforts at TVA to provide better risk quantification in support of the Dam Safety program. First, we are calculating consequences for hypothetical failures using HEC-RAS inundation mapping and HEC-FIA and HEC-LifeSim consequences modeling to develop life loss and economic consequence for dams throughout the TVA system (17 dams through 2019, with ongoing work to assess consequences at additional dams). Second, we are quantifying hydrologic hazards—the probability of dangerous pool levels caused by extreme flooding—through application of a Probabilistic Flood Hazards Analysis using the Stochastic Event Flood Model developed by MGS Engineering. The modeling involves stochastic simulation of thousands of extreme storm events for each dam to compute hydrologic hazard curves, which is an important input into the TVA risk assessment process. By calculating finer resolution and more accurate risk information, TVA has valuable tools to make decisions related to major capital improvement projects, the sufficiency of their current operating policy, and allocation of resources.

Assessing Water Supply Reliability through Future-Looking Projects

CWR is now working on a collaborative project to assess the reliability of the water supply. The University of Tennessee is completing a dendrochronology study to understand the historical occurrence of drought at different locations in the Tennessee Valley. We are using the outputs of this study combined with statistical modeling to produce extended, continuous climate datasets to drive hydrologic and reservoir models and assess the reliability of the water supply for intakes throughout the valley. TVA hopes to use this information to further encourage economic development in the region by water-dependent businesses. We anticipate that a comprehensive understanding of water reliability will be an important facet as water demands continue to shift and increase throughout the country.

With these and other potential projects, CWR intends to continue our longstanding collaboration with TVA to provide a wide range of river management services across several mission-critical operational areas.

Share

Clients

  • Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

Our Experts

Shaun Carney
Shaun Carney Senior Research Environmental Engineer

Practice Areas

Water
RTI Logo
Partner With Us
  • US Government
  • Commercial
  • Foundations & Associations
  • Multilateral Donors
  • Universities
  • Suppliers
Site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Security Policy
  • Site Map
  • Terms of Use
  • Accessibility
  • Contact Us
Contact Us
Facebook Icon Twitter Icon Instagram Icon YouTube Icon Linkedin Icon
delivering the promise of science
for global good
RTI Health Solutions RTI Innovation Advisors RTI Health Advance

© 2022 RTI International. RTI International is a trade name of Research Triangle Institute. RTI and the RTI logo are U.S. registered trademarks of Research Triangle Institute.