David Silverman, PE, PhD CV

David Silverman, P.E., Ph.D

Conact: david@jsa-eng.com

Current Research Interests
Long term water supply forecasts for California using large-scale climatological parameters and artificial intelligence techniques
Effects of climate change on California's water supply and water quality
The use of artificial intelligence techniques and expert systems in the design of infrastructure

Education
Ph.D Civil Engineering University of California, Los Angeles, June 1999
Major area: Water Resources Engineering
Minor area: Atmospheric Sciences Research: Neural Network Analysis of Long Range Precipitation Forecasts Advisor: John A. Dracup
The use of artificial intelligence data processing techniques to determine the interactions between surface and atmospheric conditions that influence the hydrological and climatological processes behind long lead rainfall forecasts.

M.Eng Civil Engineering University of California, Berkeley, May 1989
Major Area: Construction Engineering & Management
Minor Areas: Hydrology & Hydraulic Engineering
Urban & Regional Planning
Research: The integration of GIS and expert systems to aid urban planning

B.S. Civil Engineering Carnegie -Mellon University, May 1987 Received departmental senior research project award

University of Southern California (1989-1994) - graduate courses in civil engineering and artificial intelligence. Civil engineering course emphasis in hydraulic and coastal engineering. Involved in semester long project to study the sediment transport in the L.A. River. Two semester independent research on the use of fuzzy logic in design.

CalTrans certified 24-hour SWPPP training

Fellowships Department of Education graduate student fellowship, USC, 1990
Lady Davis Trust Fellowship, Technion University, Israel, 2001

Registration
Professional Engineer (Civil, California) - C58650

Memberships
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Council of Engineering Consultants

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Present Director of Engineering, JSA, Inc., Calabasas, CA. JSA is a civil engineering firm specializing in commercial, industrial, and residential planning and land development. Oversaw the operation of the engineering and survey departments with an annual company income high of approximately $5M.
2001-2002 Lady Davis Fellow, Technion University, Haifa, Israel. Developing multi-seasonal precipitation and streamflow forecasts for Israel.
Proposed, developed and organized a highly successful workshop with leading researchers and government organizations in Israel on Improvement of Israel's Water Resource Management through Detection and Forecasting of (Very) Long-Term Hydrologic and Climate Trends
Provided to the Israeli Meteorological Service initial forecasts over the State of Israel of annual precipitation using my forecasting to methodology to improve the operational seasonal forecast of precipitation anomaly issued routinely by the Israel Met Service.
Before leaving Israel, I started working with Mekorot to do risk and sensitivity analysis of the water supplied by the upper catchment of the Jordan River to the use of very long range forecasts. Since the regions water supply is very limited, longer range planning is imperative, but the risk must be analyzed.
2001-2002 Scientific coordinator, researcher, and member of the Scientific Management Board for GLOWA-Jordan River (luna.tau.ac.il/~glowa).(salary approx. $1000/mo) Researching the possible impacts of development and climate change on Israel's water resources in order to develop strategies for sustainable and far-sighted management of the regions water resources.
2000-2001 Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar, UC Berkeley. Interdisciplinary project on "Vulnerability Assessment of San Joaquin Basin Water Supply, Ecological Resources, and Rural Economy due to Climate Variability and Extreme Weather Events." Looked at the effects of climate change on the hydraulics and pollutant transport of the San Joaquin River; developed GCM to local downscaling models of precipitation and temperature. Funded by an EPA STAR grant.
1999-2000 Post-doctoral Scholar, Institute of the Environment, UCLA. Multidepartmental project to analyze the anthropogenic effects on the Malibu Creek drainage Basin. Analyzed and created a sediment transport model of the basin to evaluate the effect of urbanization on the water quality of the basin.
1990-2001 Director of Engineering, & Interim Director of Survey and Mapping, JSA, Inc., Calabasas, CA
1993-present Martial Arts Instructor (part-time), University of Southern California
1989 Associate Engineer, Ralph M. Parsons Company. On-site engineer for the Large Scale Cavitation project, Memphis, TN.
1984-1989 Design Engineer, JSA, Inc. (summers)
1978-1984 Land Surveyor, JSA, Inc. (summers)

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
1998 Instructor, UCLA for "Introduction to Computing for Civil Engineers"
1997 Teaching Assistant, UCLA for "Water Resources Engineering"
1988 Graduate Student Instructor, U.C.Berkeley for "Introduction to Surveying for Non-Engineers"

PRESENTATIONS
"Vulnerability of Water Resources in Eastern Mediterranean Ecosystems Due to Climate Change - An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Management," Pinhas Alpert and David Silverman, AMS Annual Meeting, Long Beach, CA, February 2003
" Season-ahead forecasting of precipitation using tele-connections", David Silverman, Israeli Water Commission workshop on Improvement of Israel's Water Resource Management through Detection and Forecasting of (Very) Long-Term Hydrologic and Climate Trends, Tel Aviv, Israel, April 2002
"Vulnerability of Water Resources in Eastern Mediterranean Ecosystems Due to Climate Change," David Silverman and Pinhas Alpert, GLOWA Annual Meeting, Munich, Germany, May 2002
"The Integration of DSM2-SJR into Climate Change Modeling for the San Joaquin Basin," David Silverman, Bay-Delta Modeling Forum, Asilomar, CA February 2001
"The Use of Climatic Data for Long Range Streamflow Forecasting," John A. Dracup and David Silverman, Hydro2000, Perth, Australia, 2000
"Neural network analysis of long range precipitation forecasts," David Silverman and John A. Dracup, Sixteenth Annual Pacific Climate Workshop, Catalina, CA 1999
"Artificial Neural Networks and long range precipitation prediction in California," David Silverman and John A. Dracup, American Geophysical Union 1998 Winter Conference, San Francisco, CA
"Teleconnections as estimators of California’s precipitation by Artificial Neural Networks," David Silverman and John A. Dracup, Fifteenth Annual Pacific Climate Workshop, Catalina, CA 1998
"The El Nino/Southern Oscillation and Neural Networks for long range precipitation predictions," David Silverman and John A. Dracup, Fourteenth Annual Pacific Climate Workshop, Catalina, CA 1997

PUBLICATIONS
"Risk and reliability issues in water supply management using long range forecasts in the upper Sea of Galilee catchment", David Silverman, (to be submitted to the Journal of Water Resources Planning & Management)
"Long Range Precipitation Forecast Indicators Determined through the Analysis of a Trained Neural Network", David Silverman, (to be submitted to the Journal of Applied Meteorology)
"Improvements to Statistical Downscaling using Principal Component Analysis", David Silverman and Norm L. Miller, (submitted to Geophysical Research Letters)
"Artificial Neural Network Forecasts of California's Precipitation", David Silverman and John A. Dracup, Experimental Long-Lead Forecast Bulletin, March 2000
"Data mining in the trained backpropagation network," David Silverman and John A. Dracup, edited book on Artificial Neural Networks in Hydrology, Water Science and Technology book series (Prof. V.P. Singh), published by Kluwer, 2000
"Artificial neural networks and long range precipitation prediction in California," David Silverman and John A. Dracup, Journal of Applied Meteorology, Jan 2000