GMS was initially developed by the Engineering Computer Graphics Laboratory at Brigham Young University (later renamed in September 1998 to Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory or EMRL) in the late 1980s on Unix workstations.
In April 2007, the main software development team at EMRL entered private enterprise as Aquaveo, LLC, and continue to develop GMS and other software products, such as WMS (Watershed Modeling System) and SMS (Surface-water Modeling System).