We are a consulting company supported by cutting-edge research. We provide technical services and training in the fields of hydrologic modelling, calibration, and floodplain mapping. We bring the latest and greatest research into practice, particularly in applications where accurate and reliable model predictions are the most important, such as flood forecasting and reservoir management.
Values
In our technical work, we believe in bringing the best of applied research into practice. The best way to do this is to embrace open-source software where possible, and empower our clients to understand their models and customize them for their own needs. The primary modelling platform we support is Raven, which is actively being used by hydropower companies and forecasting centres across Canada. Raven is licensed under the Artistic License, meaning that you will never be inundated by licensing fees or issues caused by proprietary software. Innovation and continuous improvement in both academia and in-house drive the development of our supported toolsets, resulting in the best possible products and models for our clients.
We are an employee-owned company, and empower each person at Heron Hydrologic to do and be their best. We welcome any and all qualified individuals to apply to join our team, and believe that everyone benefits when ideas are shared with an open mind.
Why Heron Hydrologic?
- we support open source software, and the software you use will be supported without licensing fees and be continuously developed not just by your project, but other projects and improvements directly from academia
- our people are the experts in using and applying Raven to solve difficult problems
- our people can develop new tools and new Raven features to meet your specific needs
- we believe in empowering our clients through training courses, open licensing, and reproducible workflows with each project
Our People
Our people are global experts in their fields.
- Dr. Robert Chlumsky, MASc., P.Eng., President
- Dr. James R. Craig, PhD, P.Eng.
- Dr. Bryan Tolson, PhD, LEL
Robert is a licensed Professional Engineer with experience in both federal government, municipal government, and in industry as a consultant in a Water Resources Engineer role. With Ecosystem Recovery Inc. (now Matrix Solutions), Robert built numerous HEC-RAS hydraulic models, designed coastal infrastructure, undertook Municipal Environmental Assessments, developed and used ESRI Collector apps in creek surveys, to name a few things. With Heron, Robert has worked on projects including building Raven streamflow forecasting models, reviewing models used by hydropower utilities, building data analysis workflows in FEWS, and calibrating hydrologic models.
As a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo, Robert is an expert in hydrologic modelling and calibration, particularly with Raven. Robert is also the lead developer of the RavenR package and the Blackbird package, and a daily user of the R language for analysis.
Dr. James Craig is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo and a licensed Professional Engineer. James is also the lead developer of the hydrologic modelling framework Raven, which has been extensively in both research and industry, including partners such as Ontario Power Generation, BC Hydro, City of Montreal, and Deltares USA.
James’s research focuses on the development and application of improved methods for modeling surface water, groundwater, heat transport, discontinuous permafrost, and the surface water / groundwater interface.
Dr. Bryan Tolson is a Professor at the University of Waterloo, and holds a limited engineering license with Professional Engineers Ontario. Bryan is a model calibration expert and his single- and multi-objective calibration algorithms (DDS and PADDS) are used in research and in practice around the world.
His research team has focused projects that ultimately make it easier to build distributed hydrological models. For example, the CaSPAr forecast archive is Canada’s only archive of ECCC numerical weather forecasts and downloaded CaSPAr files can be directly read into Raven. Another example includes his team’s work on BasinMaker to discretize lake-dominated watersheds and derive various routing attributes that get written into Raven input files.
See the BasinMaker generated Ontario Lake-River Routing Product (https://lake-river-routing-products-uwaterloo.hub.arcgis.com/)
Brian Peng is an Engineering Hydrologist at Heron Hydrologic and a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo’s Computer Engineering program. Brian has worked on multiple projects including development of the blackbird program in C++, web development for clients, data analysis workflows, geospatial analysis, and development of software tools to meet client needs. Outside of work, Brian enjoys playing badminton and video games.
