Corps Water Management System

The ability to effectively operate reservoirs to minimize flooding during events and maximize conservation during droughts supports primary missions of the Corps and is critical to the Nation. The Corps Water Management System (CWMS) is the Corps comprehensive data acquisition and hydrologic modeling system AIS for short-term real-time decision support of water control operations nationwide. Reservoir regulation supports the authorized purposes of the reservoirs and specifically addresses flood risk management and loss-of-life concerns. CWMS is the primary tool used by Corps water managers, working cooperatively with other federal agencies and Corps operational partners, to help them minimize flooding during an event, optimize storage during droughts, as well as monitor and perform day-to-day operations. Corps Districts are having difficulty implementing CWMS because of insufficient funding to analyze watersheds and develop simulation models used within CWMS. This effort is to further implement CWMS at Corps districts by using water engineering consultants to develop hydrologic, hydraulic, and reservoir operation models and a sophisticated data management and display system; to implement them within CWMS, and to coordinate use of models, data, and results within the Corps and with other operational agencies that partner with the Corps. The models developed under this effort can also be useful for infrastructure planning purposes and can be used in other systems such as HEC-WAT (Watershed Analysis Tool), resulting in comprehensive watershed planning models ready made for scenario and IWRM planning.

Fact Sheet (pdf, 134 KB)