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Emery Coppola, Ph.D.

NOAH Co-Founder, President, Director of Product Development and Principal Hydrologist

Even as a child, Dr. Coppola had a fascination for water and the environment. That fascination grew as he did and fueled his commitment as an adult to diminishing the threat that water shortages and water quality degradation pose to the well-being of our environment, our health, our economy, and to world security.

Emery is a pioneer in the application of AI to water resources modeling and management. Years before “big data” and AI became part of our everyday language, he recognized the importance of these advanced technologies for addressing the ever-growing worldwide water crisis. He co-founded NOAH to bring problem-solving technology to the field of hydrology to help solve the serious problems surrounding water management and preservation.
Emery first proved the enormous value of AI, and its enhanced value when combined with formal optimization, on the contaminated New Jersey Toms River Parkway wellfield, later made famous by the Pulitzer Prize winning book “Toms River”. From this seminal work, he was the first to apply AI to a number of important water management problems, including accurately predicting dynamic conditions in complex real-world groundwater systems under ever changing pumping and weather conditions.
Co-developer of NOAH’s patented real-time decision support system for water management, he has applied AI models and optimization to groundwater, surface water, water supply and water distribution systems.
With a Doctorate in Hydrology from the University of Arizona, and over twenty-five years of experience on water projects world-wide, Emery has a rare blend of theoretical knowledge with practical real-world experience. This includes large scale studies to assess water resources for long-term sustainability and management, large-scale contamination studies, characterization of complex groundwater and surface water systems, water quality studies, saltwater intrusion/upconing, wellfield hydraulics, aquifer test design and analysis, and contaminant transport.
His modeling experience is not limited to AI and optimization but includes more traditional numerical and analytical methods. He has designed extensive data collection systems for hydrologic studies to support modeling efforts that include AI.
As an internationally recognized expert on the application of AI to complex water management problems, he has consulted on its use to nations in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, as well as Australia. He has performed AI-related funded research for the United States National Science Foundation, the European Science Foundation, the United States Environmental Protection, and the United States Geological Survey, among others.
Emery, and his partners at NOAH, work to develop innovative products related to real-time data acquisition and processing, improved data analyses and prediction, data visualization, and hardware-software integration.
Emery has always been fascinated by water and the environment, as evidenced by his undergraduate degrees in Marine Science and Geology from the University of Miami, Florida. Based on his experience on water projects that span the local, regional, and national locations in both developed and under-developed areas, Emery believes that water shortages and water quality degradation are among the biggest threats that we face. Areas once accustomed to water security are now under existential threats, while many areas that have historically suffered will experience increased human suffering. “Without proper data analysis and decision making, the growing water crises will inflict enormous costs on our environment, our health, our economy, and world security.”
Emery is a prolific author of scientific, peer reviewed publications. Among others, he is the first author of a book chapter entitled “Artificial Neural Network Based Modeling of Hydrologic Processes” published by Taylor & Francis (CRC Press, March, 2014) in the reference Handbook of Engineering Hydrology. He also is the first author for the book chapter entitled “Application of Optimization Models and Decision Support Systems in Drought published by Taylor & Francis (CRC Press) in the reference Handbook of Drought and Water Scarcity (June, 2017).

Emery is at one of his favorite spots, a natural water rapids “chute” on the Delaware River near Washington Crossing.  Normally, the chute is a torrent of frothing whitewater with choppy waves and sudden drops and rises along its rocky course. But a long drought has reduced the normally turbulent flow to a relatively calm state. A short walking distance upstream, George Washington famously crossed the Delaware River on a very cold Christmas Eve in the midst of a snowstorm, surprising the Hessian soldiers in Trenton on Christmas Day. The Hessian surrender turned the tide of the Revolutionary War.  Coincidentally, the tide of the Delaware River ends in Trenton, 80 miles upstream from where it begins.