Hydrologic and Hydraulic Modeling Support with Geographic Information Systems

Abstract

Invited papers from the Water Resources track at the 1999 ESRI International User Conference compose this book, a forum for dealing with specific GIS issues in water resources. The topics presented in this book deal with terrain modeling and GIS support for hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, with a focus on NexGen models developed by the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Although the focus is on HEC model support, the GIS principles presented here apply to most water resource models. The first section of the book covers the role of digital elevation models (DEMs) in water resources modeling. The second section presents issues of rainfall-runoff modeling using GIS and HEC-HMS. The third section deals with issues related to floodplain modeling using GIS and HEC-RAS. This book presents the most up to date survey presently available of the application of GIS to flood hydrology and hydraulics. Its primary focus is on the use of grids or triangulated irregular networks to describe the watershed and stream channel terrain surfaces. It demonstrates that the techniques in this field have evolved into a sound, reliable technical base, which can be used with confidence to construct hydrologic and hydraulic models based on GIS data.