CADSWES is an interdisciplinary Center for the research and development of decision support tools for management of water and environmental resources. Established in 1986, CADSWES is housed in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE), College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The mission of CADSWES is to research, design, prototype and develop integrated decision support systems to help solve real-world water resources and environmental problems.

Currently the primary research sponsors are the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through collaborative research projects at CADSWES these three agencies combine resources to develop common tools for river and reservoir system management. RiverWare, a modeling environment for reservoir system planning, operations and analysis, is licensed commercially through the University of Colorado to contribute to more effective water resources management globally. Technology transfer to the agencies and licensees is also an important aspect of the CADSWES mission. Thus training classes and user support are ongoing activities.

The CADSWES R&D team includes water and environmental engineers and scientists, software engineers, management information scientists and researchers from other disciplines as well as graduate and undergraduate students from CEAE and other departments. The R&D team collaborate internally and with sponsoring agencies and academic faculty to carry out applied research in the areas of hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, policy evaluation, data analysis and decision science. The results of research are implemented in computer tools used by sponsoring agencies for system management.

CADSWES endeavors to contribute significantly to improved management of water resources and environmental systems by

• undertaking relevant research and serving as a university center for collaboration of relevant research among researchers, agencies, faculty and students;
   
• working closely with resource management agencies to understand and respond to decision support needs;
   
• applying powerful and appropriate information technologies to advance the results of research to useful decision support tools;
   
• maintaining, supporting and teaching the use of the decision support tools to facilitate improved resource management by government agencies and others;
   
• educating students in the development and use of decision support tools and in the issues and methods of resource management.