Company

HydroAlgorithmics is an Australian owned and operated company specialising in providing technical environmental services and developing innovative digital solutions within complex scientific and engineering disciplines.

We offer hydrogeological technical studies and expert witness services, software development and numerical modelling support. In addition, we author industry-leading software for numerical groundwater modelling:

• AlgoMesh is our flagship product for mesh generation and building three-dimensional groundwater and integrated hydrological models.

• AlgoCompute is our web-based platform that makes it easy to perform simulation, automated calibration and uncertainty analysis at any scale in the cloud.

Leadership

Dr Noel Merrick is a groundwater modeller, hydrogeologist and geophysicist with over 40 years' experience in groundwater management issues and policies. He retired in 2009 as an Associate Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he was Director of the National Centre for Groundwater Management and ran courses in Groundwater Modelling, Groundwater Geophysics and Groundwater Policy and Management. Since then he has specialised in providing groundwater modelling and peer review services, particularly for the mining industry.

As a researcher, he pioneered methods for resource sustainability quantification and management, particularly using optimisation techniques, and has been engaged in research projects with the Aquaculture, Rice, Cotton and Contaminant CRCs. He led the development of HotSpots, the software that is being used by the NSW government to facilitate groundwater trading. As a consultant, he has undertaken many environmental impact studies for major infrastructure, resource and mining projects. 

He was a member of the NSW working group that drafted the State Groundwater Policy documents and recently has been instrumental in the final form of the NSW Aquifer Interference Policy. He has participated on several expert panels for the NSW government, is a salinity auditor for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and has been a modelling adviser to the Commonwealth government and to five State governments. 

Noel is in demand as a peer reviewer and mentor on many groundwater assessments and modelling studies, particularly coal mine assessments.

Dr Damian Merrick is a software developer, computer scientist, numerical modeller and information technology professional with over 25 years' experience. Throughout his career, he has developed technological solutions to complex problems across a wide range of application domains: groundwater and surface water modelling, geographical information systems, information visualisation, transportation, defence and marketing.

Damian has been extensively involved in the execution and management of many software projects, including commercial products, bespoke code development in consulting and in-house capacities, and research prototypes.

Several of the products he developed are now in common use in groundwater modelling workflows throughout the industry worldwide: AlgoMesh, TVM/TVK/TVS, AlgoWater, and AlgoCompute. In November 2022, he was awarded the national Innovation and Technology Award by IAH Australia, for his contributions in the groundwater software space.

Damian specialises in understanding complex problem domains, and converting the results of research in those domains into software that is reliable, effective and efficient.