2026 Riverare User Group Meeting: Collaboration and Innovation in Water Management
The 21st CADSWES RiverWare User Group Meeting was held on August 26-27, 2026, bringing together 144 water management professionals and researchers from 63 organizations. Participants attended both in person and online, representing federal, state, and local agencies, utilities, consulting firms, and research institutions.
In an opening keynote panel, the CADSWES RiverWare technical team shared current major development efforts, ongoing challenges, and longer term outlook for RiverWare. Presentations by users described applications of the RiverWare modeling tools centered on planning, operations, natural flow determination, accounting, flood control, hydropower and decision making under deep uncertainty in a wide range of basins among which were the Colorado River, Truckee-Carson, Tennessee River, Central Utah, the Great Salt Lake, Klamath, and Tarrant Regional Water District.
CADSWES presentations described recent software enhancements to plotting, scripting, rule processing and data management and ongoing development of new functionality in the tools including methods for forecast-informed and risk-informed reservoir operations and simulation-based optimization with a new Borg-RiverWare software module. Trending topic areas highlighted current and potential use of artificial intelligence with RiverWare and compliance with cyber security requirements and standards.
The meeting concluded with an “open mic” interactive session, providing users with an opportunity to ask questions and voice requests and recommendations for enhancements. This session helps to ensure that RiverWare continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of the water management community.
The meeting agenda is available with links to presentations. The RiverWare User Group Meeting is held every 18 months; the next meeting is planned for February 2028. Agendas and presentations from previous meetings are also available.
