NAME

r.water.fea - Finite element analysis program for hydrologic simulations.

(GRASS Raster Program)

SYNOPSIS

r.water.fea

OVERVIEW

r.water.fea is an interactive program that allows the user to simulate storm water runoff analysis using the finite element numerical technique. Infiltration is calculated using the Green and Ampt formulation. r.water.fea computes and draws hydrographs for every basin as well as at stream junctions in an analysis area. It also draws animation maps at the basin level.

DATA REQUIREMENTS

The maps required by r.water.fea are:

1) Basin map
2) Stream map
3) Drainage map
4) Accumulation map
5) Slope map

The other data requirements of r.water.fea are the parameters needed to calculate infiltration and the channel roughness parameter. Model parameters may be provided either in the form of maps or as values:

1) Manning roughness coefficient map or basin value
2) Saturated hydraulic conductivity map or basin value
3) Suction head at wetting front map or basin value
4) Effective porosity map or basin value
5) Degree of saturation basin value

DESCRIPTION

On running r.water.fea for the first time, the directory "r.water.fea" is created under $LOCATION. When the user runs r.water.fea, the program will prompt the user for the project name. The project name refers to the directory that is created under the "r.water.fea" directory. All files (not maps) related to the analysis carried out by r.water.fea are stored under this directory. If the project does not exist then the user is further requested for the input maps. If the project already exists, then the program looks for the proper project related files to proceed with stopped work.

Configuration

The user is asked for the following configuration modes: I) Rainfall mode: The rainfall mode is defined as follows:

1 = spatially uniform and constant in time
2 = spatially uniform but varying in time

If the user decides to use mode 2, then a mechanism is provided to allow creation of a rainfall rate file (described in step 4).

II) Basin-level hydrographs: This configuration mode allows the user to view intermediate hydrographs for every basin. The hydrographs will be displayed on the graphics monitor. Each basin is considered to be independent of every other basin in the analysis area.

III) Basin-level animation maps: This configuration mode allows the user to create time-series maps for later animation of flow depth for all the basins that have been analyzed. All animation maps use a multiplication factor of 1000. The map cell value divided by the multiplication factor yields the actual value of flow depth in meters. The user will require enough file space in the GRASS database for this configuration. All animation map names have the following naming scheme:

fea.<project_name>.#

Here '#' represents the time step. One time step refers to 1/40th of the total monitoring time. Twenty maps are created at every other time step.

Program flow

The basin and stream maps are displayed on the monitor when the user starts working on a project. The entire analysis is divided into a number of steps. The user is presented with a menu to proceed through the set of steps to facilitate easy changes to the simulation for a given analysis area or to stop analysis between menu steps and continue at a more convenient time.

The main menu is shown below:

Choose from the menu:

* 1. Process steps without breaks.
*-> 2. Select basins for simulation.
X 3. Extract topographical data.
X 4. Select hydraulic parameters and simulation time.
X 5. Basin simulation.
X 6. Simulate any particular basin.
X 7. Channel routing of basin hydrographs.
* 8. Stop.

You are starting from the beginning.

Choice:

The "X", "*", and "*->" above have the following meaning.

* 8
The user can select this part from the menu.
*-> 8
This is the step that the user must select in order to proceed in a sequence.
X 8
The user can not select these parts of the menu (until previous steps have been executed).

Throughout the program the symbols described above change as the user moves from step to step. The message just above the Choice prompt signals the status of the program, and guides the user as to what should be the next step.

"1. Process steps without breaks." 8
This part of the menu will not prompt for steps 2-5, 7 and will carry out all the analysis. The user will find it advantageous to use this step when analyzing a small area or a few basins.

"2. Select basins for simulation." 8
This part of the menu draws the basin and stream maps for the user to select the area of analysis. The mouse is then activated to provide a point and click environment for the user to select basins in the area of analysis. Upon successfully selecting the basins the user is given the choice of deleting basins from the selected area. The basin topology is then determined and information on basin statistics is gathered. The information on connectivity between basins is stored in the "input.basin" file and the information on basin statistics is stored in the "basin_info" file. Two reclass maps describing the analysis area are also created. The maps have the following naming scheme:

"fea.stream.<project_name>"
"fea.basin.<project_name>"

The user should avoid using these names to create other maps. Once these maps are created the user should not destroy them, if the user wishes to continue working on the project.

"3. Extract topographical data." 8
This part of the menu generates information about the connectivity between cells and boundary conditions. This information is stored in the "input.file" file in the project directory. If the animation configuration has been set then another file called "coordinates" is created in the project directory. This file contains information on the coordinates of every cell in the analysis area.

"4. Select hydraulic parameters and simulation time." 8
This part of the menu carries out two tasks. The first task involves querying the user for simulation parameters. The simulation parameters include duration of rainfall, maximum intensity, time step for simulation, monitoring time and names of simulation maps if any. The second task involves querying channel characteristics assuming the channels as trapezoidal cross-sections. The user is required to provide channel side slope, channel bottom width and the channel roughness coefficient values for every stream category.

The program creates a file "timedata" in the project directory to store information from this part of the menu. If the user has selected the "Spatially uniform and time varying rainfall" mode (mode = 2), then the user is queried for the the name of a time file. If the file does not exist then a screen like the one shown below appears:

.if t .ne 15

center;
l l l.
------------------------------------------------------------------
                               Rainfall data                                   
                               -------------                                   
[The time column must be filled in increasing order.]                          
                                                                               
                     Time[minutes]        Intensity[cm/hr]                     
                                                                               
    1                    ______              ______                            
    2                    ______              ______                            
    3                    ______              ______                            
    4                    ______              ______                            
    5                    ______              ______                            
    6                    ______              ______                            
    7                    ______              ______                            
    8                    ______              ______                            
    9                    ______              ______                            
   10                    ______              ______                            
   11                    ______              ______                            
   12                    ______              ______                            
   13                    ______              ______                            
   14                    ______              ______                            
   15                    ______              ______                            
.T& 
c s s s
c s s s
l l l l.
AFTER COMPLETING ALL ANSWERS, HIT <ESC> TO CONTINUE              
(OR <Ctrl-C> TO CANCEL)                            
------------------------------------------------------------------

It is important to note that the values in the time column should be in an increasing order. It is also not necessary to fill all the rows and the user can stop after filling only a few rows. The number of lines are limited to fifteen. If more than fifteen lines are required then the user will have to create the file using an editor. In that case the user should just type the time since commencement of rainfall (minutes) in the first column followed by the rainfall intensity (cm/hr) in the second column as shown below:

center;
l l
l c.
10	2.54
30	4.52
60	5.62


"5. Basin simulation." 8
This part of the menu carries out the simulation for each basin in the area of analysis. Every basin is analyzed as independent of every other basin. The user is shown the independent basin hydrograph for every basin on the graphics monitor. The file "disch.basin" is created towards the end of simulation of all the basins. This file contains columns of discharge for each basin. The column number corresponds to the basin category value in the legend. If the animation configuration mode was set then a file is created in the project directory called "disch_file". This file holds basin discharge values at every point in every basin of the analysis area.

"6. Simulate any particular basin." 8
This part of the menu provides the facility of changing basin characteristics such as the Manning roughness coefficient and other infiltration parameters. This choice can be used only after the successful completion of choice 5. If the user has provided maps for the parameters then the user should select "stop" from the menu to make changes to the parameter maps provided to the model.

"7. Channel routing of basin hydrographs." 8
This part of the menu connects the basins that were considered independent in the previous step. Routing of the basin-level hydrographs is done based on the connectivity between basins. This can generate hydrographs only for seven stream junctions. If there are more than seven stream junctions then the first seven stream junction hydrographs are shown. The process of drawing individual basin animation maps follows the drawing of the hydrographs at stream junctions. After completing this choice a file "disch.junction" is created. This file contains discharge values at different steps for every stream junction.

"8. Stop." 8
This part of the menu is available to the user at any time between the different choices described in the menu and exits the user out of the program.

LIMITATIONS

1.) Negative values of drainage direction inside basins maps cannot be accepted. Negative values are generated as a result of incomplete information regarding the basin drainage pattern (e.g., r.watershed produces negative values as a result of outflowing drainage basins).

2.) The drainage map should route the water and not form pits, lakes, or ponds. Note that this does not imply that the DEM by itself should not have any pits.

3) Interstorm modeling, interflow, or baseflow are not considered.

4) Backwater effects are not considered.

5) The kinematic wave analogy is appropriate where the land surface slope and channel slope are large. This may not be true in flat, marshy terrain and in slow, meandering river channels.

OUTPUT FILES OF INTEREST

These are ASCII files that can be found in the "$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>" directory. The files have a format such that it can be imported to various analysis packages.

disch.basin 8
This file contains multiple columns which contain the individual basin discharge values in order of first column containing the discharge values for basin one and the second for basin two and so on.

disch.junction 8
This file contains the results of the discharge values at stream junctions specified by the icons. The first column in this file shows the time step in minutes. The remaining columns specify the discharge values. The first row specifies the stream junction icon numbers.

NOTES

1. r.water.fea alters the region in the WIND file. This is done by making a systems call to:

g.region align=name

just when the program r.water.fea is run.

2. A small watershed can be analyzed by providing values of model parameters. However it is advisble to provide maps of various model parameters if there are many basins in the watershed. In the former case the value provided by the user shall be constant for the entire basin for which the value is queried. The user shall create the infiltration maps using the following set of rules. The map value divided by the multiplication factor yields the actual value in the described units:

center tab(:);
ll
lc.
Parameter:Multiplication factor


Soil saturated hydraulic conductivity map (meters/sec):10,000,000

Manning roughness coefficient:1000

Soil suction at wetting front (m):1000

Soil porosity map (m3/m3):1000

3. If the user has provided a slope map that has zero slope value anywhere in the map, then a slope value of 5% is assumed for that cell.

4. It is preferred that none of the basins in the analysis area has more than 750 cells, as this will increase the computation time drastically. The number of cells in a basin can be controlled by setting the threshold value to small values when running r.watershed.

5. Using larger cells can speed up the analysis process significantly. It is important to note that r.watershed should be run for the resolution at which the user desires to run the r.water.fea analysis.

FILES

All the files listed below are ASCII files. None of these files should be deleted if the user wishes to continue working on the same project.

$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/input.basin 8
This file contains information on connectivity between different basins in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/input.file 8
This file contains information on connectivity between different cells for every basin in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/disch.basin 8
This file contains discharge values for every basin in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/disch.junction 8
This file contains discharge values at every stream junction in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/timedata 8
This file contains the response querried from the user in choice 4 of the menu.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/basin_info 8
This file contains information on statistics of the basins in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/coordinates 8
This file contains information on coordinates of every cell in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/control 8
This file contains information on map names, configuration modes, and stopped choice in the menu.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/disch_file 8
This file contains the discharge values at every point in the analysis area.
$LOCATION/r.water.fea/<project_name>/timefiles/<file_name> 8
This file contains the spatially constant and time variant rainfall mode file.

REFERENCES

Finite element methodology used by r.water.fea is described in
Vieux, B. E., Bralts, V. F., Segerlind, L. J., Wallace, R. B., (1990), "FINITE ELEMENT WATERSHED MODELING: ONE-DIMENSIONAL ELEMENTS", J. of Water Resources Planning and Management, Vol. 116, No. 6, p803-819.

SEE ALSO

r.slope.aspect
r.watershed
r.mask
r.reclass
r.stats
r.colors

AUTHOR


Baxter E. Vieux, University of Oklahoma, Norman
Nalneesh Gaur, University of Oklahoma, Norman