waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager: Technical Specification

Geospatial Data Input

waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager supports the following file formats:

Data Type	Formats Supported
GIS files (vector – point/line/poly)	MapInfo TAB (.tab)* MapInfo MIF/MID (.mif)* ESRI Shape (.shp)* MicroStation DGN (.dgn)* AutoCAD DXF (.dxf)* Google Earth KML (.kml)*
Images (raster – pixel based)	JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg) Bitmap (.bmp) Enhanced Compressed Wavelet (.ecw) JPEG2000 (.j2k, .jp2, .jpx, .jpc, .j2c)* MrSID Imagery (.sid)* TIFF/GeoTIFF (.tiff)*
Elevation Data	ASCII (text) XYZ ASCII Grid MapInfo Vertical Mapper Grid (.grd)* Idrisi Grid (.rst, .img) ESRI Grid (.adf)* ERDAS Imagine (.img)* GIS Vector (.shp, .tab, .mif)* MicroStation (.dgn)* AutoCAD 3D (.dxf)* 12D (.12da and .xyzt)
Text	Rich Text Format (.rtf)* Adobe PDF (.pdf)* Text (.txt)*
Web	HTML Web Pages (.htm, .html)
Tabular (see also OLE)	Comma – separated values (.csv)*
Object Linking & Embedding (OLE)	Installed windows – based programs that support OLE include (but are not limited to): - Microsoft Word^Ò (.doc)* - Microsoft Excel^Ò (.xls)* - Microsoft Access^Ò (.mdb)* - Microsoft Powerpoint^Ò (.ppt)* - ‘avi’ and ‘mpeg’ video - Adobe PDF (.pdf)* - any file that can be "double clicked" in windows explorer

Hydrodynamic Model Results Files

The results files from a hydrodynamic flood model must be converted to a specific waterRIDE™ file format: either RASTER (*.wrr) or TIN (*.wrb) based.

The structure and format of .wrb and .wrr files will be provided on request, to permit users to convert their own files.

Translator tools which automatically convert the results files of some commonly used hydrodynamic models into .wrb and .wrr files, are available. Translator tools are available for the following hydrodynamic model systems:

• MIKE11

• MIKE21

• EXTRAN (XP-SWMM)

• HEC-RAS

• DRAINS overland flow

• ESTRY

• Generic Link-Node models

• Hard Copy and Physical Model Results

• RMA

• TUFLOW

• SOBEK

• InfoWorks RS

• FLS

• ANUGA

• Any model results saved in ASCII Grid format

Computing Requirements

- Windows® operating system (Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows Vista)

- Minimum requirement; Pentium I, 200MHz, 512Mb memory

- Optimal computing requirements; Pentium IV, 2GHz+, 2GB RAM

Hydraulic Results Presentation

Any functional operation on hydraulic model variables, including use of GIS data can be built into waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager. Current standard outputs, comprise:

Thematic Plots

- water level

- velocity (including X and Y components)

- depth

- hazard

- velocity times depth

- Froude number

- unit stream power

- energy

- bed shear

Thematic plots can be shown for any of the above items at any timestep in the flood sequence or for the peaks. Note that the peaks are determined for each hydraulic parameter at each node independent of time. Colour palettes for thematic displays can be readily created and customised. Velocity vectors can be displayed on top of any thematic surface.

Interactive Animations

Each of the thematic surfaces can be animated with opaque or translucent colours and with or without velocity vectors. Note that the animations are not AVI's but sequencing of the timesteps with full capabilities of zooming, panning, surface interrogation, GIS interrogation, Exporting etc

Time Plots

At any point on flood surface:

- any hydraulic parameter (above), and

- rate of rise

Time series points can be saved/loaded and time series data can be exported to a spreadsheet.

Profile Plots

Along any selected alignment, the thematic plot surface and flow are calculated.

Profile points can be saved/loaded and profile data can be exported to a spreadsheet.

Flow Plots

- hydrograph of flow across a selected cross-section

Digital Terrain Model

- thematic map

- ground level at any point

- cross sections

- profiles

GIS Layers

Unlimited. Any number of GIS layers can be imported into waterRIDE™ FLOOD and viewed with the flood data. GIS layers can be made active to link to data contained in georeferenced data bases.

Integrated Hydraulic Results and GIS Analysis

The heart of the system is its dynamic link between the hydraulic model surfaces and GIS databases. It is the ability to manipulate the full time series of spatial flood data from a single file to link the surface to GIS databases that distinguishes waterRIDE from standard GIS applications. Any number of floodplain management and emergency response processes can be readily built into the system to serve customer needs. Current standard processes include:

- flood damage calculations (including AAD)

- flood extents mapping, extraction, processing, and exporting

- flood planning level mapping (eg 1 in 100 year +0.5m)

- user specified flood hazard mapping

- translation from any hydraulic results surface to a GIS spatial framework
eg. mapping to cadastre to create new GIS datasets

- mapping to GIS regions using centroid, vertex maximum, vertex average, gridded region, percentile exceedance

- emergency response procedures linked to key flood indicators

- flood information added to existing GIS databases

- calculation of derived data by integrated data held in GIS with water surface data (eg depth over floor flooding, time to depth > 0, time to peak)

- flood forecasting and prediction

- superimposition of flood levels on scaled property photos

- real time calculation of GIS field data based on GIS and hydraulic data

- parameter, time-based and Boolean queries

Utilities and Elevation Data Tools

Utilities are available for converting, processing, manipulating, mapping and editing surfaces:

- Direct conversion of 2D model results

- Conversion of 1D model results using waterRIDE 1D Surface

- Conversion between grid and TIN based waterRIDE files

- Mapping water surfaces to finder scale DEM's

- Calculating differences between surfaces

- Calculating "peak of peaks" or "flood envelopes" from many surfaces

- Stretching water surfaces to the true flood extent (particularly useful for grid based hydraulic models)

- Clipping of surfaces to a GIS shape

- Coordinate projection conversion

- Adjusting network coordinates (rotation, shifting, multiplication)

- Importing existing DEM's from other packages (12D, ESRI, MapInfo, ASCII Grid, Microstation, AutoCAD)

- Creating seamless DEM's from a variety of source elevation data

- Thinning and clipping raw elevation data (particularly useful on ALS datasets)

- Creating DEM's from contour data

- Batch processing many operations

- Recording animations as AVI movie files

- Managing and creating custom hazard categories

- Metadata management for each water surface

- Manning's equation calculator

Viewing Tools

Standard GIS viewing tools ie:

- spot polling

- zoom

- zoom window

- pan

- refresh

- layer toggle

- zoom lock

- measure distance

- measure volume

Basic GIS editing tools:

- create new point, line, polyline, polygon

- create new GIS file, including table structure

- edit GIS field data for an object

- edit shape (move, delete, move points, insert points, delete points)

- georeferencing layers

Exportability to GIS Platforms

All static surfaces can be exported to third party GIS systems in MIF/MID or SHP format, or as gridded surfaces (ASCII grid)