ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA. In the late summer months of 2011, just as the historic Missouri flood stages finally receded in the US, a tropical storm hit the Chao Phraya river basin in Thailand. The flood in Thailand killed more than 800 people, displaced more than 13 million, and caused more than $46 billion of damage in and around Bangkok, according to a World Bank report. After the flood, Thailand’s Royal Irrigation District (RID), began discussions with USACE about flood prediction technology.
In May 2015, RID hosted two members of the CEIWR-HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis Systems software) team, Cameron Ackerman and Stanford Gibson, and representatives from the Pacific Ocean Division (POD) John Emmerson and Jim Ligh. The USACE team visited RID in Bangkok to conduct an introductory flood modeling workshop. Over fifty, mostly early career engineers, from RID and the Thai Army participated in the three and a half day workshop.
The HEC engineers led a flood modeling workshop, helping participants develop basic flood modeling skills, and helping them learn to apply HEC-RAS to large river flooding and irrigation channel hydraulics. POD representatives also had productive meetings with RID staff, who requested additional, periodic workshops to develop their technical capacity. USACE and RID took the first steps to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate future work and cooperation.
Learn More
For more information, visit www.iwr.usace.army.mil.
Download this article as a PDF