Bow River Basin AI Network (BRAIN)

The Bow River Basin, our local watershed, is one of Canada’s most intensively managed and climate-sensitive watersheds, which hosts several cities (including Calgary) and rural municipalities, and supports significant agricultural irrigation, municipal water supply, industry, recreation, and ecologically sensitive headwater regions. It faces pressing challenges involving increasing demand, climate-induced changes in the hydrologic systems, such as increased variability, declining snowpacks, and groundwater stores.

What we're doing:

The Bow River Basin AI Network (BRAIN) is a local-first AI agent built around a community-scale digital twin of the Bow River Basin. A prototype was demonstrated at the Bow River Basin Council Science Forum in May 2026. In addition to addressing user queries, BRAIN provides realistic future scenarios based on any narrative the user provides.

This involves:

• Building the Bow River Digital Twin (BRDT) applying novel, state-of-the-art AI/ML approaches. Using multiple data sources, BRDT provides a consistent, near-real-time state of the water cycle across the basin.
• Building AI/ML models trained for drought prediction, flood risk, and long-term water availability projections specific to the Bow River Basin
• Building an AI agent that runs on a minimally spec'ed laptop/ desktop, and uses free, open-source AI, and provides curated guidance to stakeholders about the basin. For example, it can answer questions such as "Will there be an El Niño this year? How does the basin respond to one?", "What made the 2013 floods so catastrophic?". The AI agent also generates interactive plots to supplement its answer.
• Co-developing tools with Indigenous communities, municipalities, agricultural users, and conservation organizations across the basin

Project Leads

Hrishi Chandanpurkar

Juhi Huda

Collaborate

Interested in contributing to this project? We welcome researchers, community partners, and funders.