History of the Hydrologic Engineering Center

The Hydrologic Engineering Center, HEC, was established in 1964 to provide a center of expertise for US Army Corps of Engineers field offices in the newly emerging area of hydrologic engineering. The mission was to combine research, technical assistance, and training efforts to develop and implement the latest hydrologic engineering technology for Corps offices and their partners in the profession. Research emphasis would be on bridging the gap between basic research at universities and the practical applications needs of the field offices. This applied research would focus on particularly difficult hydrologic engineering problems in field offices, thus both developing new technology and providing technical assistance to the field. As the new technology was developed, formal training courses, field workshops, and professional society publications would make it available to all Corps offices and the profession. This paper will discuss the formation of HEC, its organization and philosophy, as pertains to development and use of hydrologic engineering technology over the last 39 years. Emphasis has always been on development of generalized, non-location-specific computer programs that are distributed in the public domain. This results in worldwide testing and information sources for new and improved software capabilities and applications methodologies. Emphasis is also placed on standardizing software design and operational methods to minimize learning time and errors in application. The impact of the growth of computer resources on the evolution HEC's software is described as well as recent advances in a new generation of software.