Dr. Edward Tiernan

Dr. Edward Tiernan is a hydraulic-hydrologic modeler who specializes in stormwater management and watershed optimization. His research focuses on Best Management Practice (BMP) design and monitoring, as well as watershed impacts of site-scale runoff interventions. He serves the Southern California Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC) developing frameworks for evaluating structural and non-structural BMP performance relative to hydrologic and treatment design criteria. Additionally, he is exploring how to integrate BMP mechanisms and processes into high-resolution stormwater runoff models.

Dr. Tiernan received his B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2016, his M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018 and 2022, respectively. He joined SCCWRP in 2022.

Education

Ph.D., Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. 2022

M.S., Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. 2018

B.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. 2016

Professional Experience

Engineer, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. Costa Mesa, CA. 2022-present

Graduate Research Assistant, University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX. 2016-2022

Geochemical Modeler, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Berkeley, CA. 2019

HPC Hydraulic Modeler, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI). Tuscaloosa, AL. 2017

Paleohydrology Researcher, Peruvian Ministry of Culture. Cusco

Teaching Assistant, University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX. 2016-2018

Teaching Assistant, University of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA. 2014-2016

Honors and Awards

1st Place, University Forum at Texas Water - Virtual, 2020 & 2021

2nd Place, Storm Water Management Conference, South Padre Island, TX. 2019

3rd Place, International Conference on Water Management and Modeling (ICWMM), Ontario, Canada, 2022

Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship, Department of Energy, 2019

National Water Center Innovators Program, Summer Institute, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), 2017

Excellence in Research Award for Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Graduate, and Industry Networking Event (GAIN) at UT Austin, 2018, 2020

Trigg & Fannie E. Twichel Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Civil Engineering, UT Austin, 2020, 2021

William H. Luedecke Endowed Fellowship for Mechanical and Civil Engineering, UT Austin, 2016, 2019

Walter L. and Reta Mae Moore Graduate Fellowship in Water Resources, UT Austin, 2018

Publications


Journal Articles

Tiernan, E., E. Fassman-Beck, N. Lombardo. 2024. Effects of Postprocessing Decisions on Flow-Weighted Event Mean Concentrations. Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment 10:04024005.

Hodges, B.R., S. Sharior, E. Tiernan, E. Jenkins, G. Riano-Briceno, C. Davila-Hernandez, E. Madadi-Kandjani, C.W. Yu. 2024. Introducing SWMM5+. Journal of Environmental Engineering 150:02524003.

Tiernan, E. D., & Hodges, B. R. (2022). A topological approach to partitioning flow networks for parallel simulation. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 36(4). https://doi.org/10.1061/(asce)cp.1943-5487.0001020.

Tiernan, E. D., Yu C-W., Riano-Briceno, G., Sharior, S., Jenkins E., Brashear, C., & Hodges, B. R. (2022). Hydrological comparison of open-source numerical models for the Saint-Venant equations on regional river basins. **Manuscript in preparation for submission to the journal of Hydrological and Earth Systems Sciences (HESS).

Tiernan, E. D., Yu C-W., Riano-Briceno, G., Jenkins E., & Hodges, B. R. (2022). A methodology for generalizing open-channel network models between modeling paradigms. **Manuscript in preparation for submission to Journal of Open Source Software.

Sharior, S., Riano-Briceno, G., Tiernan, E. D., Yu C-W., Jenkins E., & Hodges, B. R. (2022). Computational Performance of a Parallelized Saint-Venant Solver Compared with EPA SWMM. **Manuscript in preparation for submission to the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.

Hodges, B. R., Yu, C-W. Tiernan, E. D., Riano-Briceno, G., Sharior, S., Jenkins E. (2021). SWMM5+ Alpha Release Documentation. Texas Data Repository V2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/WQZ5EX.

Technical Reports

Fassman-Beck, E., E. Tiernan, D. Nguyen, R. Butler. 2024. Turf Replacement BMPs to Reduce Dry and Wet Weather Runoff. Technical Report 1391. Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. Costa Mesa, CA.