HEC-RTS

The following table and sections contain activities funded by the CWMS ERC program. 

Planned Activities

Conduct Manual Testing

The team will dedicate substantial effort to manual testing of HEC-RTS. This includes ongoing testing during development to address bugs, validation of new features, and comprehensive regression testing before each release. While labor-intensive, thorough testing is essential to ensure that new versions do not introduce additional issues. Every new feature or fix must perform as expected during development and be verified once integrated into HEC-RTS. Manual testing also extends to related code areas to confirm that other functionalities remain unaffected. Robust testing reduces the likelihood of bugs arising during real-world water management operations, where resolving issues is significantly more costly. These testing and debugging efforts are also critical to cloud migration and broader district implementation initiatives.

Improve Overall Testing Procedures

The team will continue to enhance the software’s overall testing procedures. Key improvements include adding new features to the automated testing framework—such as the ability to test forecast data extraction from a test database, better reporting of test failures, and exploring software speed profiling. Additionally, the team will expand both automated and manual test suites to increase coverage across the software. By developing targeted manual test plans focused on specific sections, testing can be more efficient and systematic, especially for areas affected by code changes. While adding tests is labor-intensive, investing in automation reduces dependence on manual efforts, increases release reliability, and shortens testing time—ultimately accelerating the release cycle.

Improve Documentation and Develop Tutorials

Throughout the year, the team will enhance documentation and create new tutorials as software improvements are completed and new versions are released. With the upcoming release of HEC-RTS 3.6, a consolidated User’s Manual will be developed to replace the previous separate manuals for CWMS and HEC-RTS.

Support Field Operations

The team will continue to offer direct support to users who encounter issues in HEC-RTS. This support ensures that users can resolve problems quickly and continue using the software for their water management operations. For assistance, please contact the HEC Modeling Team via Discourse, Microsoft Teams, or by reaching out directly.

Perform Software Maintenance

When bugs are reported—either by users or the development team—they are investigated to determine their root causes. The team then works to correct the underlying issues. Once fixes are implemented, the updated code undergoes rigorous testing to confirm that the problems have been fully resolved and that no new issues have been introduced. A new version of the software is released to users only after this testing is successfully completed.

Host Implementation Workshop

The MMC will sponsor an Implementation Workshop, providing water managers with direct support from HEC and field personnel to assist in advancing the implementation of their district’s watersheds.

Support Field Helping the Field Visits

Field Helping the Field is an initiative where experienced users deliver technical and organizational support to Water Management offices. A small team—typically a mix of HEC and field staff—travels to individual districts to help address district implementation challenges. Around ten site visits are planned for this year.

Enhance Extract and Post Editors

The team will target feature improvements for the Extract and Post Editors, including paired data for water quality measurements and direct extracts from APIs such as USGS, NWS, NOAA, USBR, and NRCS.

The Time Series Transformation Processor will also be enhanced as part of this effort. It separates the extract and transform steps currently combined within the Extract Editor. This will allow for transparency and more control of the transform process, and allow for user review of extracted data before the transform occurs. Improvements include options to fill missing data and to extend time series data.

Manage FY25 Extract and Post Editors Contract

The team will review and validate contractor deliverables included in the FY25 Extract and Post Enhancements contract. Deliverables in the contract include:

• Add DSS Paired Data Support to the Extract and Post Editor
• Extract and Post of Ensemble Time Series, Forecasts, and versioned data to the CWMS Database
• Extract of CWMS Location Levels and CWMS Ratings from the CWMS Database to HEC-RTS
• Development of the Time Series Transformation Processor with HEC-RTS

Improve Login Procedures

The team will focus on enhancing the HEC-RTS login for CWMS cloud data services and improving HTTPS-based data source connections. They will also prepare to phase out RMI-based connections once all districts have completed their migration to the cloud.

Improve Team Modeling Functionality

The team will explore and begin implementing a new HEC-RTS Team modeling feature designed to improve file change tracking and synchronization between user and master versions of watershed models and forecasts. Additionally, they will evaluate the feasibility of using the Model Library as the repository for master copies of Team Models.