Reclamation selects phase I winners of river modeling prize competition

The Bureau of Reclamation announced the phase I Divide and Conquer Challenge winners. This challenge seeks to significantly improve the execution speed of numerical models that simulate river hydraulics, sediment erosion, transport, and deposition in rivers and streams.

"Reclamation is facing an increasing demand to look at large river systems and how the hydrology is changing over time, which involves using computationally intensive simulation models," said Senior Advisor Research and Development Levi Brekke. "The results of this competition show promise that we can accelerate these models and provide results to decision-makers in a quicker, more cost-effective manner."

The winners of phase I are:

• Mahdi Esmaily, Ithaca, New York, $40,000
• Weston Ortiz, Albuquerque, New Mexico, $25,000
• Xiaofeng Liu, State College, Pennsylvania, $20,000
• Zhi Jian Wang, Lawrence, Kansas, $15,000

These four winners are eligible to move to phase II and will be joined by Christophe Choquet of Vanves, Île de France, France, who received an honorable mention. The winner's phase I solution will be incorporated into Reclamation's sedimentation and river hydraulics model to demonstrate the increased execution speed against Reclamation’s baseline model. The winners will submit their phase II submission in the next eight months. The top three solutions will share $245,000.

Reclamation is partnering with the Federal Highways Administration Office of Innovation Implementation - Resource Center, NASA Tournament Lab, and Freelancer.com on this competition. Please visit https://www.usbr.gov/research/challenges/srh.html to learn more about this competition.

Original source can be found here.