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Track: Water Resources
E. James Nelson
Brigham Young University
368 CB
PROVO, UT 84506
Telephone: 801-378-7632
Fax: 801-378-2478
E-mail: jimn@byu.edu
Norman L Jones, Christopher Smemoe
From a Grid or Coverage to a Hydrography: Unlocking Your GIS Data for Hydrologic Applications
Defining Issue: Accessing hydrologic databases created with ArcInfo for use in commonly used analytical models such as HEC-1 and TR20. GIS Solution: The Engineering Computer Graphics Lab (ECGL), in partnership with Esri, is developing an open data structure to allow for seamless transfer of hydrologic data between ArcView and rainfall/runoff modeling software. The interface will allow hydrologic databases, including vector, raster, and TIN data, created by ArcView and ArcInfo to be used directly by software supporting hydrologic models such as HEC-1, TR20, and NFF. Methodology: ArcView and ArcInfo provide a powerful environment for compiling hydrologic databases including delineated basin boundaries and areas, stream lengths, land use, and so forth. This information is typically stored as one or more layers in a much larger urban or resource management database. However, the GIS environment is not ideal for running common hydrologic models such as HEC-1. For this reason the hydrologic layers of
the GIS database often remain "locked" to the engineer needing to perform a hydrologic analysis. The interface being developed, as a partnership between Esri and ECGL, will consist of a set of macros that will allow pertinent hydrologic data to be passed seamlessly from ArcView and ArcInfo to a generic shapefile definition. An application of the new open data structure will be demonstrated using the Watershed Modeling System (WMS) developed by ECGL. Software: The application is being developed using Microsoft Visual C++ and Avenue. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how hydrologic data layers can easily be extracted from GIS databases into a shapefile for use by programs designed specifically for hydrologic modeling.
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