Chengmin Hsu
January 13, 2011

HMT Welcomes Chengmin Hsu

HMT would like to welcome team member, Chengmin Hsu, a hydrologist hired in September 2010 by the Earth System Research Laboratory's Physical Sciences Division (PSD). Chengmin first became involved in HMT in the Fall of 2009 as a research assistant where he developed a mathematical method to separate soil moisture data from satellite and thermal sensor observations. The research results became a chapter in his dissertation; an important experience that extended his know-how in remote sensing and GIS toward exploration in land surface and atmosphere processes. Chengmin continues to explore methods for mapping high-resolution soil moisture and has been assigned to evaluate the performance of a hydrologic model with various QPF and QPE inputs. He is also involved in a pilot study to create an Enterprise Geographic Information System (eGIS) for PSD. This system will be used for running various hydrologic models and also serve as the platform in HMT for internal and external data links and system interoperability between NOAA, the US Geological Survey, and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

In his early career, Chengmin trained to be an architect. But after years of practice, he felt that an individual building can contribute only slightly to wellbeing and societal interests. No matter how elegantly buildings are designed and constructed, they are just as vulnerable to flooding and wildfire as dilapidated buildings. A so-called "green building" also cannot halt extreme weather caused by climate change. After several years of "thinking bigger and exploring deeper", Chengmin started a new journey in geospatial technology in 2002 by entering the master of engineering in the GIS program at the University of Colorado – Denver. He earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering system in 2010 with a thesis entitled, "Remote Sensing Applications for Environmental Management," which focused on mapping natural phenomena and man-made features using geospatial technology and statistical methods. In addition to soil moisture work, Chengmin's dissertation explores deeply object-based concepts and their application in wetland mapping and ATV trail detection. Chengmin believes that the concept of object-based fuzzy rule theory can be used to verify probabilistic forecasts resulting from ensemble techniques as well as locally disruptive weather such as fog, thunderstorm initiation, surface icing, flooding, assimilation of precipitation measurements, and fire weather prediction.

Publications
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