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RTI Center for Water Resources – Water Resource Projects

Learn more about the RTI Center for Water Resources’ projects below. Use the filters to see specific projects for a country, client, sector, or service. To clear a specific filter, select “Any” at the top of the drop-down menu, and click “Apply.” For information on other RTI water projects, visit our water and global environment and water resilience pages.

Interested in learning more about our work or specific projects? Contact us.

Title Clients Countries Sectors Services Summary
Forecasting and Flash Flood Support
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  • India
  • Floods
  • Monitoring and Forecasting
Flash flood and river flooding plague many of the major rivers in India. RTI evaluated and recommended needed improvements in river flood forecasting systems. Key Indian staff were then trained on using the National Weather Service River Forecast System.
Google Flood Forecasting and Inundation
  • Google.org
  • India
  • Floods
  • Monitoring and Forecasting
RTI provided technical support to aid Google in developing a scalable process to simulate hydrologic models using remote sensing information and machine learning techniques. Support was also provided to map floods to provide flood warnings to population in un-gaged and remote locations. As part of the support, RTI helped to verify the Google Inundation Model, a 2D hydraulic model, in the Brahma Putra and Ganges river basins  and provided suggestions on model improvements. Flood models were developed for several locations using HEC-RAS 2D and the GIM and calibrated to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images using precision and recall statistics. 
North East India Water Resources Rapid Assessment
  • World Bank
  • India
  • Water Supply
  • Planning and Allocation
  • River Basin Operations
  • Hydro-Economics
  • Source Water Protection
  • Ecological Assessment
This project was formed to assess the current conditions and develop recommendations for effective planning and management of water resources in the North Eastern states of India. This project involved extensive stakeholder engagement with RTI delegates organizing interactions over nine states with regional organizations, and ministries at Centre level.  Results from stakeholder engagements were used to develop a range of recommended interventions and capacity building actions to be implemented in a subsequent phases.
Sutlej River Flood Warning System
  • U.S. Geological Survey
  • India
  • Floods
  • Monitoring and Forecasting
As part of the USAID Disaster Management Support project in India, RTI developed a system that provides warnings of critical flooding conditions on the Sutlej River in Northern India.  In addition to protecting lives and property, the system also provides advance flood warnings to operators at the Nathpa Jakhri dam.