United States
I help local and state governments mitigate risk from floods and droughts by providing real-time water monitoring systems, developing predictive models, quantifying resilience, and building custom applications. I am a versatile engineer with over nine years of experience in water resources engineering that includes explaining hydrological regime shifts, floodplain modeling and mapping, large scale spatial and temporal analysis, trend detection, software development, project management, stream gauge installation, and water quality modeling.
I investigated why catchments experience hydrological regime shifts during droughts and identified the causal mechanisms through evaluating 30 years of continuous water quality data alongside multiple environmental observations. I developed a coherent conceptual model showing how catchment dynamics tip into an alternate state and persistent even after a drought ends, making water resources and communities more vulnerable to future climate extremes. While pursing the doctorate degree, I led the publication of a R-package "hydroState" into the CRAN library which allows anyone to easily and robustly identify hydrological regime shifts at an annual and seasonal timescale: https://peterson-tim-j.github.io/HydroState/ Additional open source R-packages were developed for my research and are available here: CQ2: https://github.com/ThomasWestfall/CQ2/tree/main ResidualState: https://github.com/ThomasWestfall/ResidualState (fork of hydroState)
I developed hydrological and hydraulic models to map floodplains that support real-time flood alert systems for mountain streams, large rivers, and coastlines in North Carolina and New Mexico. I played a pivotal role in optimizing inundation library development for North Carolina's Flood Inundation Mapping and Alert Network (FIMAN), and I led large scale spatial analyses to identify vulnerable regions and transportation assets for expanding coverage of flood risk. I also provided critical information with urgent research and data analysis for emergency management personnel to execute immediate evacuation orders during hurricanes.
I had many roles and responsibilities as an undergraduate and graduate researcher at Virginia Tech with the interdisciplinary Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS). We operated a real-time environmental monitoring system with water quality, streamflow, and weather data from an urban catchment in Blacksburg, Virginia. I was primarily responsible for managing, maintaining, and calibrating the instruments that involved routine site visits and extensive troubleshooting during extreme weather conditions (snow/rain/sun). The data served an Online Watershed Learning System that was utilized for education and research by various classrooms and organizations at Virginia Tech, and I helped marketize the system with developing a website and YouTube videos. I routinely led outdoor classroom activities for multiple disciplines and actively provided demos at science fairs and other public outreach events. I developed the curriculum for a summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program, and I personally guided a local high-school teacher through hands-on watershed activities and some lessons were further implemented in high-schools. I additionally fostered further collaboration abroad by developing a similar LEWAS monitoring station in "UQ Lake" at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. While maintaining these responsibilities, I developed two research projects. As an undergraduate, I prepared a research poster: “Capturing Acute Hydrologic & Hydrochemical Stream Processes through High-Frequency Data”, and as a graduate researcher, I developed a research report: “Using Dispersion to Track Illicit Discharges in an Urban Stream”
Reviewed utility plans and borings to design Controlled Modulus Columns to support pipes. Developed excel calculation sheets considering soil types and water tables to improve design efficiency. Organized column load tests onsite to insure structural stability. Developed communication skills with field engineers, design engineers, machine technicians, and manual laborers.