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Department/Program(s):
    Position: Faculty
    Title: Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Director, Program in Geological Engineering.
    Area(s):
    • Environmental and Water Resources Engineering
    Research Area(s):
    Durability of infrastructure; damage to materials by frost and salt; conservation of art and architecture; transport in porous materials; nucleation and growth kinetics; relaxation processes; sol-gel processing

    Office: C319G Engineering Quad C-Wing
    Phone: 609-258-4615
    James Smith


    Education

    BSE, Mathematics, University of Georgia, 1974
    MSE, Mathematical Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University, 1980
    PhD, Geography and Environmental Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, 1981

    Research Interests 

    Smith's research interests concern the hydrology, hydraulics and hydrometeorology of extreme floods. Hydrometeorological studies have centered on development of technologies for measuring rainfall from weather radar, stochastic modeling of the space-time structure of rainfall and microphysical studies of extreme rainfall from organized systems of thunderstorms. Smith's research group has been involved in numerous hydrometeorological field campaigns, most recently in connection with the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES), a component of the NSF LTER program. Field studies in the BES have also examined the heterogeneity of hydrologic response in urbanizing watersheds, the stability of the channel-floodplain system in urban drainage networks and the hydraulics of extreme floods in urban rivers. In addition to field campaigns focused on intensively monitoring research watersheds, Smith and his colleagues have been extensively involved in field studies of major floods in the United States.

    Courses 

    CEE 472 Hydrometeorology
    CEE 263 Rivers and the Regional Environment
    CEE 583 Radar Hydrometeorology

     Updated: May 6, 2009


    Recent Publications


    1. Javier, J. R. N., J. A. Smith, J. England, M. L. Baeck, M. Steiner, A Ntelekos, The Climatology of Extreme Rainfall and Flooding from Orographic Thunderstorm Systems in the Upper Arkansas River Basin, Water Resources Research, in press.
    2. Chung, W.-H., and J. A. Smith, Viscosity-excluded formulations of 2-D river flow with a new wetting and drying algorithm, Advances in Water Resources, in press.
    3. Javier, J. R. N., J. A. Smith, K. L. Meierdiercks, M. L. Baeck, and A. J. Miller, Flash Flood Forecasting for Small Urban Watersheds in the Baltimore Metropolitan Region, Weather and Forecasting, in press.
    4. Ntelekos, A. A., J. A. Smith, and W. F. Krajewski, Climatological Analyses of Thunderstorms and Flash Floods in the Baltimore Metropolitan Region, Journal of Hydrometeorology, 8(1), 88-101, 2007.
    5. Smith, J. A., M. L. Baeck, K. L. Meierdiercks, A. J. Miller and W. F. Krajewski, Radar Rainfall Estimation for Flash Flood Forecasting in Small Urban Watersheds, Advances in Water Resources, 30(10), 2087-2097, doi:10.1016/j.advwatres.2006.09.007, 2007.