Benjamin Parish

The Alabama Water Institute's strategic plan is being developed to outline its direction for delivering hydrologic solutions for a changing world. Key themes driving this plan include global, national, regional, and local hydrologic solutions; groundwater sustainable recharge; machine learning applications; flood and drought forecasting and mapping; drinking water and low-cost sewage treatment; coastal flooding; water quality; and remote sensing. The plan also emphasizes securing funding from federal agencies and private sector partners, integrating social sciences for effective risk communication, building infrastructure resilience, and translating scientific advancements into water policy. The overarching vision is to establish a leading and unique capability in the hydrologic space.

The discussion centered on the university's investigation into hazing allegations within several fraternities under the Interfraternity Council. Key topics included the suspension of fraternity pledgeship for the year, the nature of the physical exercises involved in the hazing, the ongoing cooperation with local law enforcement regarding potential criminal charges, and the university's commitment to monitoring pledge practices and enforcing strict policies against retaliation and underground activities to ensure student safety.

The Board of Trustees held a meeting to discuss university leadership changes, specifically the resignation of Dr. Guy Bailey as President due to family health concerns. Following this announcement, the Board proceeded to formally appoint Judy Bonner as the new President of the University of Alabama. Dr. Bonner accepted the position and expressed her commitment to maintaining institutional progress, momentum, and academic excellence in collaboration with the Board, faculty, staff, and students.

The strategic plan of the Office of Water Prediction focuses on three core areas: advancing water prediction capabilities, investing in infrastructure, and cultivating workforce excellence. Key initiatives include delivering high-resolution water resources information from national to street-level across all time scales, quantifying atmospheric and hydrologic uncertainty through probabilistic forecasting, and improving forecasts by integrating coastal and hydrodynamic models for total water surface elevation, circulation, salinity, and water quality. A significant priority involves leading the federal flood innovation real-time forecast flood indication mapping effort and re-architecting the national water model into an accessible community platform. The plan also emphasizes understanding socioeconomic and behavioral aspects to better communicate and tailor information for stakeholders, and contributing to a unified forecast system across atmospheric, hydrologic, cryospheric, and ocean models.

The meeting featured presentations on various research projects, including the development of a national cyber infrastructure framework for hydrologic community engagement, the creation of intelligent data analytics and communication systems, and the modernization of the HydroShare community data repository. Discussions focused on building apps for accessing model outputs, improving data service accessibility, leveraging large language models for community outreach and flood management, and developing cloud-based workflow engines to handle large datasets and improve model reproducibility.