The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) suite of software is a well-established set of hydrologic and hydraulic (H&H) modeling tools that is capable of ingesting meteorological data to provide estimates of streamflow, flood inundation, and other H&H data. Traditional utilization of the HEC software suite revolves around its utility as a desktop application. However, HEC now enables API access to its models for scripting. HEC also releases Linux distributions of its modeling platforms and open-source software packages. Additionally, HEC is now developing cloud-based software to automate execution of the HEC models. Here, we present a case study implementation of HEC software in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) to perform automated flood forecasting. We describe the process undertaken to enable this automated forecasting, including the development and deployment of the HEC models. Further, we provide a description of how we assimilate hydrologic observations into the HEC models and an account of the software needed to perform the modeling. Our results describe an instance of how the desktop modeling undertaken in the HEC modeling suite automates flood forecasting in the cloud.
