Saturday, June 15, 2013

How to Use Excel to Make Random X, Y Coordinates in SWMM 5


NodeXYRand XRand Y
A2465753425-17995018681114137518-1734364827
B1220423412-915317559.2959332294.5-427183555.6
C1207970112-2970112080939805860-417442286.9
D-485678704.92970112080-172000249.51835904922
E-27895392281388542964-2050647732326604825.1
F-4221668742-130759651.3-3537896272-59872442.99

If you have a SWMM 5 file without any X, Y  coordinates you can assume an X and a Y and then use Excel to make each pair random by using the RAND() function.  You at least will see each of the nodes on the screen with associated links.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Wikipedia Traffic for the SWMM versus EPANET Articles

Subject:  Wikipedia Traffic for the SWMM versus EPANET Articles

Wikipedia has one article for EPANET and three articles for SWMM 5 (two are redirected to the Stormwater Management Model Main Article).  The statistics for the last three years (data before 2007 is unavailable) show an average of 28 visitors per day to SWMM and 16 per day to EPANET).  The search name has switched from the word SWMM to Stormwater Management Model starting in 2009.





Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Custom shape in SWMM 5


You can use a custom shape in SWMM 5 for a closed Link or if it is an open channel then you can use a Transect Section as in HEC-RAS

You use the custom shape,
Make a Table of Depth/Full Depth and Width/Full Depth

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Two Methods to Calibrate RDII RTK parameters in H2OMAP SWMM and InfoSWMM

Two Methods to Calibrate RDII RTK parameters in H2OMAP SWMM and InfoSWMM

There are two methods to calibrate the RTK parameters for RDII Analysis in InfoSWMM and H2OMAP SWMM.  The two methods are similar but use a different approach to calibrate the data:
1.       The RDII Hydrograph component of the Calibrator Add On also uses a Genetic Algorithm to calibrate the upstream RDII locations based on monitored flow but using the hydraulic network for the calibration.
2.      The RDII Analyst uses a Genetic Algorithm to Calibrate the RTK parameters for one location using monitored rainfall and flow data.  This calibration does not take into account the hydraulic routing in the network. 

Figure 1.  RDII Analyst and GA Calibrator

If you use the DOS Version of SWMM 5 be careful to NOT have spaces in directory names

InfoSWMM can import H2OMAP Sewer, InfoSewer and H2OMAP SWMM models

Water Providers of North America v 2.0 infographic

Representation of Surcharging in 1D Open Channels in InfoWorks ICM and CS

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Nodes in InfoSWMM and H2OMAP SWMM

Nodes in InfoSWMM and H2OMAP SWMM

Or how the invert, rim elevation, crown elevation of the highest connecting link, pressure depth and flooded depth interact during a simulation.

Level (invert of the Node)
Elevation (crown – surcharged if the HGL is above the crown elevation)
Ground (either a depth above invert or a Rim Elevation)
Overflow is either lost, stored, increases the HGL, Inlet Controlled or flows to a 2D mesh depending on the values of Surcharge Depth, Ponded Area, Inlet Options or 2D Options, respectively



How to Make a New GeoDataBase in InfoSWMM or InfoSewer

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Five Parameters beside the Maximum Time Step that help control simulation length in InfoSWMM and SWMM

FYI, If you like twitter and like to center your embeded tweets add this to the custom twitter code How to center your embedded tweets class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center">

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

From 3QD - THE MATHEMATICS OF ROUGHNESS


THE MATHEMATICS OF ROUGHNESS

Holt_1-052313_jpg_230x1466_q85
Jim Holt reviews Benoit B. Mandelbrot's The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick, in the NYRB:
Benoit Mandelbrot, the brilliant Polish-French-American mathematician who died in 2010, had a poet’s taste for complexity and strangeness. His genius for noticing deep links among far-flung phenomena led him to create a new branch of geometry, one that has deepened our understanding of both natural forms and patterns of human behavior. The key to it is a simple yet elusive idea, that of self-similarity.
To see what self-similarity means, consider a homely example: the cauliflower. Take a head of this vegetable and observe its form—the way it is composed of florets. Pull off one of those florets. What does it look like? It looks like a little head of cauliflower, with its own subflorets. Now pull off one of those subflorets. What does that look like? A still tinier cauliflower. If you continue this process—and you may soon need a magnifying glass—you’ll find that the smaller and smaller pieces all resemble the head you started with. The cauliflower is thus said to be self-similar. Each of its parts echoes the whole.
Other self-similar phenomena, each with its distinctive form, include clouds, coastlines, bolts of lightning, clusters of galaxies, the network of blood vessels in our bodies, and, quite possibly, the pattern of ups and downs in financial markets. The closer you look at a coastline, the more you find it is jagged, not smooth, and each jagged segment contains smaller, similarly jagged segments that can be described by Mandelbrot’s methods. Because of the essential roughness of self-similar forms, classical mathematics is ill-equipped to deal with them. Its methods, from the Greeks on down to the last century, have been better suited to smooth forms, like circles. (Note that a circle is not self-similar: if you cut it up into smaller and smaller segments, those segments become nearly straight.)
Only in the last few decades has a mathematics of roughness emerged, one that can get a grip on self-similarity and kindred matters like turbulence, noise, clustering, and chaos. And Mandelbrot was the prime mover behind it. 
Posted by Robin Varghese at 12:51 PM | Permalink 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Increase in heavy rainfalls over past 60 years in upper Midwest, US


Increase in heavy rainfalls over past 60 years in upper Midwest, US

March 14, 2013
Mar. 13, 2013 — Heavy rains have become more frequent in the upper Midwest over the past 60 years, according to a study from the University of Iowa. The trend appears to hold true even with the current drought plaguing the region, the study's main author says.
The fact that temperatures over the country's midsection are rising, too, may be more than coincidence. The hotter the surface temperature, which has been the trend in the Midwest and the rest of the world, the more water that can be absorbed by the atmosphere. And the more water available for precipitation means a greater chance for heavy rains, explains Gabriele Villarini, assistant professor in engineering at the UI and lead author of the paper, published in the Journal of Climate, the official publication of the American Meteorological Society.
"We found that there is a tendency toward increasing trends in heavy rainfall in the northern part of the study region, roughly the upper Mississippi River basin," says Villarini, in the civil and environmental engineering department and an assistant research engineer at the IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering. "We tried to explain these results in light of changes in temperature. We found that the northern part of the study region -- including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois -- is also the area experiencing large increasing trends in temperature, resulting in an increase in atmospheric water vapor."
Villarini notes the current drought affecting the Midwest and other regions of the country has occurred too recently to be included in his study, whose data goes from about 1950 to 2010.
"I'm not looking at the average annual rainfall. I'm studying heavy rainfall events," he says. "We may currently be in deficit for overall rainfall, but we may also be in the normal range when it comes to the number of heavy rainfall days."
Villarini and his colleagues examined changes in the frequency of heavy rainfall through daily measurements at 447 rain gauge stations in the central and southern United States. The states included were: Minnesota, Wisconsin Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Each rain gauge station has a record of at least 50 years. The data cover much of the 20th century and the first decade of this century. For the purposes of the study, heavy rainfall was defined as days in which rainfall exceeded the 95th percentile of the at-site rainfall distribution.
Villarini notes that while his study focused on changes in temperature and the frequency of heavy rainfall over the central United States, other published results have shown rainfall increases to be linked to changes in irrigation over the Ogallala Aquifer, which runs from Nebraska to northern Texas. Based on those studies, he says it is reasonable to assume that changes in land use, land cover and agricultural practice would affect the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere as well.
His colleagues in the study are James Smith, professor at Princeton University; and Gabriel Vecchi, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The research was funded by NASA and the Willis Research Network.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Iowa. The original article was written by Gary Galluzzo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:
  1. Gabriele Villarini, James A. Smith, Gabriel A. Vecchi. Changing Frequency of Heavy Rainfall over the Central United States. Journal of Climate, 2013; 26 (1): 351 DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00043.1

Sunday, February 10, 2013

From the Dish - The Wisdom of Play

The Wisdom Of Play

FEB 10 2013 @ 1:43PM
Mark Rowland meditates on the well-lived life, arguing that it “is play, and not work, that gives value to our lives”:
It might be that most of the things we do in life we do for the sake of something else. But there are still some things we do just to do them — for their own sake and not for the sake of anything else. If the former category is work, then the latter category is play. Work is activity directed at an external goal. Play is activity whose goal is internal or intrinsic to it. In its pure form, play has no external purpose or reward. We play just to play. When my sons’ volleys have been sufficiently consistent and accurate, their tennis coach will instigate a game. He yells, ‘Fruit basket!’ and lobs several balls into the air in quick succession. They have to drop their rackets, run and catch the balls before they stop bouncing. This is done amid much cackling and squeals of delight on their part — almost as if the rest of their lesson was work aimed at unleashing this bout of play. I love watching this, because I cannot imagine a purer form of play. There is no external goal or purpose. My sons do it simply because at that precise moment in time — and the squeals of delight are testament to this — there is nothing in the world they would rather be doing.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Ten years of cumulative precipitation

Ten years of cumulative precipitation

January 28, 2013 to Mapping by Nathan Yau
We've all seen rain maps for a sliver of time. Screw that. I want to see the total amount of rainfall over a ten-year period. Bill Wheaton did just that in the video above, showing cumulative rainfall between 1960 and 1970. The cool part is that you see mountains appear, but they're not actually mapped.  Source on FlowingData
The hillshaded terrain (the growing hills and mountains) is based on the rainfall data, not on actual physical topography. In other words, hills and mountains are formed by the rainfall distribution itself and grow as the accumulated precipitation grows. High mountains and sharp edges occur where the distribution of precipitation varies substantially across short distances. Wide, broad plains and low hills are formed when the distribution of rainfall is relatively even across the landscape.
See also Wheaton's video that shows four years of rain straight up.
Is there more recent data? It could be an interesting complement to the drought maps we saw a few months ago. [Thanks, Bill]

The Goal of SWMM5 Input Files

 ðŸŒŸ SWMM5 (Storm Water Management Model 5) is a widely used urban hydrology and hydraulic modeling software developed by the United States E...