Overview | waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager |

Successful floodplain management and planning requires a thorough understanding of local flood behaviour. Occasionally, this can be garnered from actual flood events, but more commonly, this understanding needs to come from computer hydraulic models.

With traditional, common place model interrogation approaches, static "snapshots" of model results are taken at the peak of the flood and used to derive hydraulic parameters such as peak water levels, peak velocities, velocity times depth (VxD), and hydraulic hazards.

 

The limitation of such an approach is that it neglects the fact that a flood develops over time. This means information critical to the full understanding of flood behaviour is lost (such as rates of rise, time to inundation, time available for evacuation, duration of inundation etc). In some cases, using peak values to derive hydraulic parameters such as velocity times depth and flood hazard is misleading, as peak depth does not necessarily occur at the same time as peak velocity!

 

The team of engineering programmers and hydraulic modellers at WorleyParsons have developed waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager to provide floodplain managers and planners with a tool for interrogating their full time-varying model results set from any model, in a live GIS system, a feature unique to the waterRIDE™ environment.

 

Models currently supported include (both 1D and 2D): MIKE11, MIKE21, RMA-2, TUFLOW, SOBEK, ANUGA, EXTRAN (XP-SWMM), HEC-RAS, RUBICON, DRAINS overland flow, ESTRY, generic link node models, hard copy and physical model results.

 

Some of the sophisticated ways in which floodplain managers and planners are using waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager include (for further details, please refer to the waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager pages):

Planning Tools

 

• Parameter Queries - identify zones where velocity and depth meet certain criteria to assist with definition of floodways, flood storage areas and the flood fringe.

• GIS Integration - easily populate GIS layers with data from your model results (such as peak flood levels and flood hazard), or use your GIS data in conjunction with the model results to derive values such as depth of overfloor flooding.

• Flood Extents - extract GIS flood extents at the click of a button ready for exporting to your favourite GIS application.

• Flood Planning Level - automatically add a buffer to peak flood levels to derive a flood planning surface, readily showing those properties in the flood planning zone and required minium floor levels.

Floodplain Management Tools

• Thematic Flood Surfaces - a library of design flood surfaces at your fingertips. Readily interrogate terrain, water level, depth, velocity, VxD, hazard, froude, shear, energy and unit stream power at any location in the model.

• Plot Hydraulic Parameter Data - create time series, profile, and flow plots using the model results at any location(s) in the model.

• GIS Integration - enhance your understaning of the model results using rich and familiar GIS datasets as backdrops.

• Flood Extents - rapidly generate GIS flood extents for ready identification of flood affected properties

• Rate of Rise - display rates of rise at any location in the model to improve understanding of the time varying nature of your flooding issues

• Parameter Queries - query your model results for specific hydraulic queries for identification of dangerous flooding conditions

• Flood Damages - easily calculate flood damages across all flood events, for all properties in your catchment, including calculation of Average Annual Damage (AAD) and present value analysis

• Metadata - tag all of your model results with additional information (such as source report, results date, comments etc) for quality assurance purposes.

 

• Community Education - the highly visual waterRIDE environment will assist in enhancing the understanding of flooding within the community.

Emergency Response Tools

• Parameter Queries - identify areas where velocity and depth exceed safe criteria

• Time-based Queries - provide a firm understanding of evacuation issues by deriving time based information such as time available for evacuation (time to inundation, duration of inundation, and rates of rise).

• Evacuation Planning- interactive animation of your model results in a live GIS environment allow you to visualise and interogate how your floods develop providing essential information in evacuation phasing and planning.

• Flood Forecasting - rapidly interpolate a predicted peak flood surface from a predicted level at a gauge (or multiple gauges). See what a predicted flood will look like and use the predicted surface for planning and management.

• GIS Integration - automatically integrate GIS Datasets with the model results to show derved information such as depth above evacuation routes or depths above critical infrastructure.

• Flood Extents - extract GIS flood extents for rapid determination of properties at risk during a flood event.

• Property Photos - integrate flood levels with scaled property photos to provide a realistic representation of flooding at an individual property and greatly enhance community flood awareness and understanding

• Rate of Rise - interrogate the rate of rise at any location in the model

Please refer to the waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager pages for further information.

Download product and information brochures for further details