The HyDROS laboratory is a proud part of the University of Oklahoma. We are located in the National Weather Center, Norman, Oklahoma. The HyDROS Lab is associated with the Advanced Radar Research Center, Water Technology for Emerging Regions Center, and the School of Civil Engineering & Environmental Science. The HyDROS Lab is a transdisciplinary research unit with synergy at the interface of remote sensing technology, water, weather, and climate. Scales of interest for modeling and prediction include the local, state, regional, and global scale.
The HyDROS Lab is proud to share that Professor Yang Hong has again been named among the world’s top-cited global researchers in the latest Stanford–Elsevier global citation database, as highlighted in the University of Oklahoma’s recent news release (https://www.ou.edu/news/articles/2025/october/dozens-of-ou-experts-included-in-latest-list-of-top-cited-global.html). The 2025 release analyzes citation data through 2024 and identifies researchers based on a composite citation score and those ranked in the top 2% of their subfield.
AQUAH (Automatic Quantification and Unified Agent in Hydrology) is an AI-driven system that transforms how we model floods and river basins. What once took experts days of manual setup — collecting data, tuning parameters, and scripting models — now happens automatically in minutes. scenario.
Dr. Yixin Wen recently received tenure and promotion at the University of Florida. Dr. Zhi "Allen" Li recently started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
One recent study, entitled “The conterminous United States are projected to become more prone to flash floods in a high-end emissions scenario” led by the HyDROS group was just published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment. As results indicate, US floods are becoming 7.9% flashier by the end of the century assuming a high-emissions scenario.
HyDROS researchers seek to observe and predict the storage, movement, and quality of water across space-time scales by integrating advanced sensing technology and numerical predictive models into an end-to-end research and application framework.
The Mission of HyDROS is to propose technological solutions for mitigating the impacts of climate change and natural hazards through interdisciplinary research and education by using the latest remote sensing technology, information technology, and hydrological models in collaboration with private and public organizations at both local and international levels for the creation of a resilient society.
We will pursue our Grand Challenge and Mission through transdisciplinary research and education involving faculty, students, and scientists with Engineering, Science, Math, and Socioeconomic Sciences backgrounds as well as cooperation with universities, governmental agencies, private companies/industry, and international counterparts.
We are always looking for talented and enthusiastic students and researchers. We have advised students major in Civil Engineering, Hydrology (Water Resource Engineering), Environmental Science (Water Track), Geography, Meteorology, Computer Science, and Geoinformatics. For general information on the Graduate Programs, please visit the web site of Graduate College and respective Departments for application materials. If you wish to visit HyDROS, please contact yanghong@ou.edu for more information.
