August 2023

Open Environment

Statement of Qualification

Open Environment

Table of Contents

About, Mission and Services

Open Environment, PLLC (OpenEnv) is an engineering and technology services company established in 2009 in Bowling Green, KY by Andrew N.S. Ernest, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, D.WRE to promote the rapid adoption via commercialization of software tools developed by Dr. Ernest's research group in Kentucky. In 2021 OpenEnv established offices in McAllen, TX, and in 2023, expanded the Professional Limited Liability Company's (PLLC) to include all the current officers of Research, Applied Technology, Education and Services, Inc., (RATES) a technology-based capacity development non-profit corporation for which Dr. Ernest serves as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), along with RATES Legal Council, Mr. Miguel Huerta.

Open Environment

Projects

On these pages, one will find information to the various projects that Open Environment has worked on in collaboration with RATES

WATERS

The Water Analysis, Training, Education and Research Services analytical laboratory was established as a cooperative partnership between Western Kentucky University, Mammoth Cave National Park, the City of Bowling Green, and various local municipalities, and water, wastewater and stormwater utilities. By delegating personnel, equipment and other resources into a shared service entity, each partner is able to avail itself of the combined capacity of the overall WATERS infrastructure, the scope of which would have been otherwise out of reach. This “Farmers Cooperative” laboratory serves a combined capacity development and regulatory compliance mission by further providing a technician training and certification platform.

WTI - Water Training Institue

The Water Training Institute was established to address the nationwide workforce shortfall of qualified treatment plant operators due to factors including the en masse retirement of baby boomers and the tightening of regulatory requirements regarding the hands-on experience required prior to licensure. A Hybrid Experiential and Distance Learning Educational Model (HEDLEM) is used to target rural areas hardest hit due to the lack of educational and experiential opportunities available to them within a reasonable proximity. A blue-collar equivalent to the Service Core Of Retired Executives (SCORE), Encourage Every Young Operator with Retired Experience (EEYORE) provides mentoring for new recruits, while a Utility Network (UNet) was established to provide experiential locations. Strategically located Community and Technical College partners provide the regional instructional delivery, allowing for both succession planning and career advancement through the combined provision of a both academic credits and state-specific, and state-approved, certification and licensing hours.

Projects

On these pages, one will find information to the various projects that Open Environment has worked on in collaboration with RATES

Water Wizard

Water Wizard is a Decision Support Framework developed specifically to enable engineers, managers, planners and other decision makers of small and mid-sized water, wastewater and watershed management systems to maximize productivity and efficiency. Water Wizard was conceived as a Rules-Based Decision Support System that provided recommended actions to operational decisions using a combination of tacit (empirical) knowledge gleaned from expert focus groups and implicit (mechanistic) knowledge encoded from process theory. The Water Wizard ecosystem has expanded to include a Learning Management System, along with an evolving suite of “Wizards” that include Water Distribution System (WDS) Decontamination Guidance; WDS Instrumentation and Operational Guidance; Water & Wastewater Utility Rate Analysis; Economic Consequence Analysis for Disruptions in Water Service, Flooding, Drought and Inter basin Transfers; Real-Time Flood Damage Forecasting; Flood Response Coordination; and more.

FRRN - Flood Response & Resiliency Network

The Lower Rio Grande Valley Flood Response and Resiliency Network (FRRN) is a regional collaborative effort to develop a real-time stage height and stream flow monitoring network that is coupled with a near-real-time flood forecasting tool and integrated decision support system. Flood Early Warning System components of the FRRN provide actionable intelligence required to develop and implement effective flood protection plans and flood responses. The structure of the FRRN integrates hydrologic engineering and social science expertise with regional planning, response, and decision-making entities in a structured, efficient, and representative format that maximizes the potential for leveraging regional synergies.

WCEMT

The Water Column Exposure Modeling Toolbox (WCEMT) is a set of modeling tools developed to meet the needs of Natural Resource Damage Assessments (NRDA) for viable methods to assess ecological impacts of significant marine oil spills based on limited empirically obtained petroleum chemistry data. The developed modeling tools estimate water column exposures of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon (TPH) and 50 Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon compounds (PAH50) resulting from the entrainment and dissolution of surface oil into the upper water column and subsequent transport/and or ultimate fate of the relevant oil fractions. These tools can be used together to determine petroleum hydrocarbons exposure of fish eggs in the water column. The vertical transport models for crude oil and/or fish eggs are based on the fundamental advection-diffusion equation.

Leadership and Management

This page contains information of the experiences and accomplishments achieved by members of Open Environment.

Andrew N.Ernest

PHD, PE, BCEE, D.WRE

Andrew has over 30 years of professional experience in Environmental and Water Resource Engineering. He has over 25 years experience as a hydrologic & water quality modeler, emphasizing first-principles-based model development and application, over 15 years experience in hydrologic & environmental informatics - focusing on translating scientific principles into language readily assimilable by elected officials and other decision makers, and over 10 years of specific emphasis on flood-related issues and other hydrologic extremes. Dr. Ernest spent 4-years as the Director of the Environmental Institute at the University of Alabama, working with the NOAA National Water Center during the roll-out of the National Water Model. He currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Research, Applied Technology, Education & Service, Inc., a non-profit corporation focusing on developing and deploying small-community affordable real-time hydrologic sensors for water resource management and flood early warning, is a tenured Full Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and the founder of Open Environment, PLLC, a water resource technology startup

Certifications

PE / TX / 83476

PE / KY / 24824

D.WRE Diplomate / Water ​Resource Engineer / American ​Academy of Water Resources

Education

PhD / 1991 / Civil Engineering / ​Texas A&M University

MS / 1985 / Civil Engineering / ​University of Southwestern ​Louisiana

BS/ 1984 / Civil Engineering / ​University of Southwestern ​Louisiana

Project Experience

• Texas Water Development Board/Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council: Flood Infrastructure Fund Category 1 LRGV Flood Protection Planning
• Texas Commission on Environmental Quality/United States Environmental Protection Agency;
• Characterization of Northern & Central LRGV Watersheds
  
• Development of Lower Laguna Madre and Brownsville Ship Channel Watershed Protection Plan
• Evaluating the Oil Surface Mixing Model for NRDA Application, National
  
• Department of Homeland Security/The National Institute for Hometown Security, Understanding Economic Impacts Disruptions in Water Service
  

Memberships

• American Society of Civil Engineers
• National, Texas & Kentucky Societies of Professional Engineers
• International Society for Environmental Information Sciences
  

Open Environment

Leadership and Management

This page contains information of the experiences and accomplishments achieved by members of Open Environment.

Education

PhD / 2011 / Civil Engineering / Texas A&M University

MS / 1996 / Environmental Engineering / Texas A&M University-Kingsville

BS / 1989 / Biology / Texas A&M University

Christopher Fuller

PHD

Chris is an experienced field engineer and is well versed in the management of large-scale field data collection projects in service to environmental and offshore energy sectors. He is proficient in applying continuous real-time in-situ observing systems and conventional event-based monitoring programs. His areas of expertise include hydrologic and hydrographic surveying, hydrodynamic modeling, constituent transport modeling, and environmental toxicology. He has worked throughout the Texas Gulf Coast in support of projects funded by the Texas General Land Office to characterize marine and estuarine oil-spill transport mechanism. He is currently the project manager for a Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) Freshwater Flows project to characterize the quantity and quality hydrologic flows to the Lower Laguna Madre. As the Lower Rio Grande ValleyWatershed Coordinator he provided technical and logistical support to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) § 319 characterization projects (Lower Laguna MadreBrownsville Ship Channel and LRGV-North and Central watershed characterizations). As project manager on Texas General Land Office- Coastal Management Program project is implementing a High Frequency Radar network that will provide real time data to NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center that will be applied to address hydrodynamic modeling efforts.

Project Experience

• RATES, Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV), TWDB Freshwater Flows
• St. Lawrence County, Characterization of Sturgeon Spawning Habitats
• Chevron Docking Facility Hydrodynamic Characterization
  

Leadership and Management

This page contains information of the experiences and accomplishments achieved by members of Open Environment.

Education

Ph.d, The University of Alabama, 2016,

Civil Engineering

M.S, The University of Alabama, 2015,

Civil Engineering

B.S., Wester Kentucky University, ​2010,

Geography

Joseph Gutenson

PHD

Throughout his time at both the University of Alabama and ​Western Kentuky University, Joseph researched in the areas ​of hydrology and hydraulics. He developed his skills in ​hydrologic modeling aswell as riverine hydraulic modeling. ​Joseph has also worked on flood damage assessment along ​with decision support systems. He is well versed in economic ​impact assessing and knowledge engineering which is a field ​of artifical intelligence that creates rules/model to imitate ​processing, judgement and behaviour of human experts. This ​involves constructions of computer systems and requires ​engineers with in-depth invvestigation skills and the ​understanding of human domains and concepts.

Project Experience

Research, Applied technology, Education, Services (RATES), Inc.

• Chief Science Officer
  
• July 2023 - Present

U.S Army engineer Reseerch and Development Center (ERDC)

• Research Civil Engineeer (Hydraulics) (DB-0810-04)
  
• June 2020 - July 2023

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminsitration (NOAA)

• Hydrologist (GS-1315-14)
  
• April 2019 - June 2020

U.S Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC)

• Research Civil Engineer (Hydraulics) (DB-0810-04)
  
• July 2016 - April 2019
  

Leadership and Management

This page contains information of the experiences and accomplishments achieved by members of Open Environment.

Education

• PhD / 2019 / Engineering Science / Clarkson University
• MS / 2003 / Electrical Engineering / State University of New York at Buffalo
• BS / 2000 / Electrical Engineering / State University of New York at Buffalo
  

Memberships

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

William Kirkey

PHD

William is an Electrical Engineer who has been designing, deploying, and managing RATES sensors and systems for environmental monitoring for 14 years. His doctoral dissertation, completed in parallel with this work, centered on novel designs for optical water-quality sensors featuring both low cost and enhanced accuracy relative to commercially available options. He has authored over a dozen refereed scientific publications. His research interests include all aspects of autonomous environmental monitoring systems, including sensor design, system design, deployment, operation and maintenance, quality assurance, cyberinfrastructure, and data management. He focuses on both reducing the costs associated with all aspects of system deployment and operation, as well as on improving both the accuracy and the utility of the data produced by such systems.

Project Experience

• RATES, Real-Time Environmental Observatory Network (REON)
• RATES, Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV), TWDB Freshwater Flows
  

Leadership and Management

This page contains information of the experiences and accomplishments achieved by members of Open Environment.

Javier Guerrero

PHD

Javier has over 25 years of professional experience in Environmental and Water Resource Engineering. He has extensive experience with public involvement in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. He founded the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LGRV) TPDES Stormwater Task Force which organized a coalition of 28 local governments and focused on stormwater management, non- point source pollution, watershed protection, estuary program initiatives, and flood drainage initiatives. He also founded the Lower Laguna Madre Estuary Program Partnership which is currently in the planning stages and encompasses 6 counties. Pursuant to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ’s) TPDES MS4 program, Javier developed a Regional Watershed Based Stormwater Management Plan that was adopted by 22 MS4’s in the LRGV. He also founded the LRGV Low Impact Development Outreach, Education and Research Demonstration Site program which comprised of over thirty (30) Best Management Practice (BMP) demonstration facilities located at 11 sites throughout the Arroyo Colorado Watershed.

Certifications

EIT / TX / 66246 / 2019

Education

PhD Candidate / 2022 / Environmental Engineering / Texas A&M University, Kingsville

MS / 2007 / Environmental Engineering / Texas A&M University, Kingsville

BS / 1992 / Engineering Technology / University of Houston

Project Experience

• Texas Commision Environmental Quality Clean Water Act Chapter 319 Non-Point Source Grant Program, Developement of the;
• Lower Laguna Madre and Brownsville Ship Channel Watershed Protection Plan (WPP) (Phase 1)
  
• Northern & Central LRGV Watershed Characterizations
  

Memberships

American Society of Civil Engineers

Texas Floodplain Management Association

South Central Arc User Group

Urban and Regional Information System Association

National Hydrologic Council

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