Project Description
In an age of cloud computing, the whole package of hydrological simulation software, which is essential and critical to a wide range of social-economical need such as smart irrigation and water management and planning, is still based on operating systems such as DOS. The user interface is not friendly, the input file (sometimes in binary format) is hard to manipulate and output files often need to be handled manually. The main goal of this project to re-develop the popular REF-ET program, which is used globally for daily evapotranspiration rate simulations, using the python programming language and move it to a cloud based platform. We will focus on re-developing the core part of the program, which is the Penman-Monteith Evapotranspiration Model. This model is well defined, can be easily verified and represents the most essential component of the REF-ET program.
Tasks and Responsibilites
Under the supervision of the faculty advisor, the student will be primarily responsible on the development of the coding using python, testing of coding accuracy using available simulation packages (i.e., input file, output files). They will create a cloud-based computing environment and test run his model. Once tested, it will be published the program to popular cloud computing platform (i.e., Amazon Web Service, or AWS) taking the advantage of the near-free cost that is available new users.
Desired Qualifications
None Listed.