Center for Research in Water Resources, University of Texas at Austin
The GIS Hydro '99 CD-ROM documents the background to presentations made at the GIS and Hydrology PreConference Seminar, held on July 23 as part of the 1999 ESRI User Conference in San Diego, California. Together with Steve Kopp of ESRI, I began this PreConference Seminar series at the 1994 User Conference held in Palm Springs. At first, the GIS and Hydrology seminar consisted simply of an outline of the ideas that were evolving in our GIS Hydrology program at the University of Texas at Austin, along with some software demonstrations by ESRI. For each seminar we produced a small booklet containing copies of the visual aids presented, and some small sections of code for accomplishing particular tasks. Recognizing the limitations of paper documentation, in 1997 we produced the first GIS Hydro CD-ROM, GIS Hydro '97, whose contents can be viewed at: http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/maidment/gishyd97/gishyd97.htm This included contributions from Brigham Young University, the first time that another University was involved in the seminar. In the Introduction to the GIS Hydro '97 CD-ROM, I described the historical background of our program at CRWR and the motivation behind preparing these CD's, which was mainly to document our work in a digital form so that others could more readily use the ideas, code and data we had prepared as part of our research program. In 1998, we were joined by two additional partners, the Danish Hydraulic Institute, and the EPA Basins program from the Office of Science and Technology, US Environmental Protection Agency. In the Introduction to the GIS Hydro '98 CD, I outlined the new developments presented on this CD. A complete description of the contents of this CD can be seen at: http://www.crwr.utexas.edu/gis/gishyd98/GisHyd98.htm. At the 1998 User Conference, we also presented a companion PreConference seminar called GIS Enviro '98 dealing with the integration of GIS and Environmental Risk Assessment. Following the 1998 User Conference, ESRI established a distribution mechanism for the GIS Hydro '98 and GIS Enviro '98 CD-ROM's and many copies were distributed to people who were unable to attend the User Conference but who wished to be informed of knowledge in this area. ESRI also reworked the contents of the GIS Hydro '98 CD and added additional materials to create a Water Resources demonstration CD which has been distributed to users of ESRI software. This year, I am pleased to welcome two new partners to GIS Hydro '99: the Hydrologic Engineering Center of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University. In order to accomodate presentations from all these participants, we have for the first time expanded the GIS Hydro seminar from a half-day to a full-day event.
From this description, you can see that the GIS Hydro PreConference Seminar has gradually evolved in substance and content over the past six years into a much more comprehensive body of knowledge than existed earlier. I am very appreciative of the constant support which I and my colleagues have received from Steve Kopp, Jim Henderson and other ESRI staff in our efforts to serve the GIS Hydrology community in this manner. I wish also to acknowledge the support of my colleagues at CRWR whose work is featured in the CRWR modules on this CD. In particular, I wish to thank Kwabena Asante, PhD student, and Dr Francisco Olivera, Research Scientist, who are the principal people responsible for the CRWR materials on this CD. While all progress is the result of individual effort, the work presented here is the product of a team of people who are dedicated in common to the idea that GIS is a useful technology in addressing hydrologic and environmental problems. We hope that you will find the information presented here useful for your enlightenment and for your own work in this field.
Whats New with GIS Hydro '99?
(1) New Contributors
Two new contributors have contributed materials to the GIS Hydro '99 CD: the Hydrologic
Engineering Center and the Utah Water Research Laboratory.
Hydrologic Engineering Center
The Hydrologic Engineering Center of the US Army Corps of Engineers is a research center dedicated to supporting the field offices of the US Army Corps of Engineers with Hydrologic and Hydraulic Engineering software. As part of these efforts, HEC has produced new versions of its programs, HEC-HMS for simulating flood discharges, HEC-RAS for flood water surface elevations, and HEC-FDA for flood damage assessment. Since 1991, HEC has supported research at CRWR dealing with linkage of GIS and these models, as described in the Floods module of this CD. During the past year, HEC and ESRI have signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), which is a mechanism by which agencies of the US government can cooperate with industrial partners to produce items of common interest. As described in the HEC module, these products will be based on ESRI software and will be distributed by HEC in the same manner as are other HEC products. On this CD is contained version 2.2 of AVRas, a set of programs linking ArcView with HEC-RAS, which in some evolved form, will form a part of the GIS Hydrology products which HEC intends to develop under the CRADA. The principal people responsible for the CRADA are Dr Dean Djokic at ESRI, and Dr Thomas A. Evans at HEC, whom I am proud to say, both received their PhD's in our program at CRWR. An expanded view of this effort can be seen in the Water Resources track of the 1999 User Conference, where Dr Djokic has organized a one-day session relating to this work.
Utah Water Research Laboratory
The Utah Water Research Laboratory is the water research and education focus of Utah State University in Logan, Utah, in much the same manner that CRWR is for the University of Texas at Austin. On a recent visit to Logan, I was struck by the work of Dr David Tarboton of this laboratory, who has developed some very innovative ideas about landscape analysis and implemented them using programs attached to ArcView. I thought it was appropriate that his work be drawn to the attention of the ESRI community and so I invited him to participate in the GIS Hydro '99 seminar. The Utah Water Research Laboratory Module on this CD, contains two main components: Sinmap, which analyzes the slope stability of the landscape and identifies locations of likely landslide activity, and Tardem, which provides tools for working with digital elevation model data in alternative ways to those contained in the ArcView Spatial Analyst. In particular, Tardem allows for the possibility that flow from each DEM cell can be partitioned between two downstream cells, rather than confining the flow direction to a single downstream cell, and it allows for some capabilities of attributing stream networks with the properties of their drainage area.
(2) New Information
Updated Digital Classroom and Library
This year, I switched from teaching my GIS in Water Resources course from the Spring to the Fall semester, and also taught it online for the first time. In addition, I've been working with ESRI to create a Spatial Hydrology Using ArcView course in the ESRI Virtual Campus. For these reasons, we have not included as many application exercises on this CD as compared to the previous ones. Various application exercises are contained in other modules though, such as in the Floods module dealing with our CRWR-PrePro system. On this CD, there are presented 26 term papers prepared by students in my Fall 1998 course, which give a good idea of the applications that they were able to make of GIS to various water and environmental problems. Students do remarkable things!
Our digital library has been expanded with new theses and dissertations completed during the past year and presented in Adobe pdf format. Get all the exciting details of our latest research!
Expanded Digital Atlas
In both GIS Hydro '97 and GIS Hydro '98, we included climate data on half degree cells for the earth, and exercises on how to use these data to compute the water balance at the land surface. On this CD, there is presented Version 3.0 of our Digital Atlas of the World Water Balance, which includes a global coverage of processed terrain information for all the continents. This marvellous resource, the product of the PhD research of Kwabena Asante, on the subject of Terrain Analysis for Global Runoff Routing, is based on GTOPO30, the 30" Digital Elevation Model of the earth prepared by the USGS, as it has been processed to define the drainage areas from the land surface flowing into each 5 degree x 5 degree box of the ocean. This delineation was carried out to support the linking of land surface - atmosphere and ocean - atmosphere models in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In order to save space on this CD, we have not included the climate data for the earth that was presented in the earlier GIS Hydro CD's.
Updated Analysis Modules from CRWR
There are 5 analysis modules on this CD showing the results of CRWR research. The Watershed Characterization module deals mainly with our CRWR-PrePro system, which processes terrain and elevation data for input to the HEC-HMS model. This module includes movies on how to use the latest versions of PrePro, which now includes routines for process precipitation information and for drawing basins maps in HMS. We have begun a new intiative dealing with River Network modeling so set of materials and ArcView scripts describing our work in this field is also contained in this module. The Floods module deals with a new line of research in flood mapping which matured during the last year with the MS research of Eric Tate. He showed how to to use the ArcView 3-D Analyst to combine stream cross-section information with existing DEM's to produce an improved model of land surface terrain more suitable for flood plain mapping. This module describes how to connect HEC-RAS and ArcView for creating flood plain maps. The Global Hydrology module is entirely new with this year's CD, and it describes our research on land surface routing methods for application with Global Climate Models. These methods rely on the terrain database presented in the Digital Atlas module. The Atmosphere and Soil Water module hasnew material from the PhD dissertation of Seann Reed, dealing with the use of soil databases in detailed soil water balance simulation, and the MS research of Kris Martinez dealing with the linking of atmospheric models, and groundwater recharge in the Edwards Aquifer. The Water Quality module contains new research from Master's theses by Patrice Melancon and Andrew Romanek, and in particular a new COC Transport extension for ArcView to compute the pollution loads of point and area sources of chemicals of concern (COC's).
Updates from BYU, EPA Basins and DHI
The BYU module from the Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory, Brigham Young University, contains an update on the WMS (Watershed Modeling System), GMS (Groundwater Modeling System) and SMS (Surface Water Modeling System) from BYU. This module was prepared by Dr Norman Jones, Dr Jim Nelson and Dr Alan Zundel of the Dept of Civil Engineering of BYU. The EPA Basins module contains a new powerpoint presentation from Dr Andy Battin which describes the latest developments with Basins. The Danish Hydraulic Institute module describes the popular ArcView-based programs for water analysis from DHI.
Ok, well, that is for now. I hope you have fun with GIS Hydro '99 and find it a useful digital compilation of knowledge to help you with your work and learning about GIS Hydrology.
David R. Maidment
Ashley H. Priddy Centennial Professor of Engineering
Director, Center for Research in Water Resources
The University of Texas at Austin
maidment@mail.utexas.edu
http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/maidment
These materials may be used for study, research, and education, but please credit
the authors and the Center for Research in Water Resources, The University of Texas at
Austin. All commercial rights reserved. Copyright 1999 Center for Research in Water
Resources.
