Steve Malers

Background

About Steve Malers

Although my education was in civil engineering (Colorado State University), I have worked as a software/systems engineer for most of my career. My primary interests are in helping organizations understand complicated multifaceted problems and implementing understandable, usable solutions. After focusing on technical details earlier in my career, I now am focusing more attention on understanding the broader connections between system components, including the legal, political, environmental, and social aspects of water resources. I founded the Open Water Foundation (OWF) because there was a need to apply the collaborative approach of open source software development to meet the technology needs of the water resources domain. I founded TriLynx Systems to maintain and enhance the NovaStar software system for real-time environmental monitoring and flood warning systems. OWF and TriLynx are now co-located with two other companies and collaborate on water data technologies. Most of my work at OWF has focused on building decision support systems for water resources problems, including key components of Colorado's Decision Support Systems (CDSS). At TriLynx, I lead a team that develops and supports the NovaStar software system. Through these efforts, I have steadily evolved software into powerful tools that serve as a platform for water resources decision making. My goal is to continue to build tools that allow people and organizations to efficiently make planning and operational decisions related to water and natural resources. Water is an important resource and we need to treat it as a global shared resource, optimizing and safeguarding its use. Specialties: Decision support systems, real-time environmental data collection and historical data management, flood warning systems, time series data analysis, engineering business process evaluation and optimization. I have the ability to understand software and water resources aspects of projects, and systems that involve high-level system issues and detailed technical issues. This allows me to formulate solutions that can be achieved through an agile and convergent development process.