Support to Enhance Privatization, Investment, and

Competitiveness in the Water Sector of the Romanian

Economy (SEPIC)
IRG PROJECT NO: 1673-000

TECHNICAL REPORT

INTERNATIONAL SURVEY OF DECISION

SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR INTEGRATED WATER
MANAGEMENT

Prepared by:

Daene C. McKinney, Ph. D.

May 15, 2004

Bucharest, Romania
 Contents
Acronyms ................................................................................................................................ iii
1. Introduction............................................................................................................1
2. Description of Decision Support Systems ............................................................1
2.1 Introduction to Decision Support Systems ..............................................................1
2.2 Important Decisions in Water Management ............................................................3
2.2.1 Emergency Water Management ..............................................................4
2.2.2 Water Regulation, Allocation, and Quality .............................................5
2.3 Technologies for Decision Making in Water Management.....................................6
2.3.1 Simulation and Optimization Models......................................................6
2.3.2. Geographic Information Systems ............................................................8
2.3.3 Expert Systems ......................................................................................10
2.3.4 Multiobjective Analysis Tools ..............................................................11
2.4 Characteristics of a Water Management Decision Support System ......................12
2.4.1 Components of a Water Management DSS...........................................12
2.4.2 Issues to be Addressed in Constructing a Water Management DSS .....13
3. Available Decision Support Systems ..................................................................17
3.1 Emergency Water Management Decision Support Systems .................................17
3.1.1 Flood Management Decision Support Systems.....................................17
3.1.2 Accidental Spill Decision Support Systems ..........................................18
3.2 Water Allocation Decision Support Systems.........................................................19
3.3 Water Quality Decision Support Systems..............................................................27
4. Conclusions and Recommendations on Decision Support System Creation..29
4.1 Lessons Learned.....................................................................................................29
4.1.1 Definition of a DSS ...............................................................................29
4.1.2 Graphical User Interfaces ......................................................................29
4.1.3 Modeling Multiple Areas of Water Management .................................29
4.1.4 Relational Databases and GIS ...............................................................30
4.1.5 Legacy Code..........................................................................................30
4.2 Design Aspects of a DSS. ......................................................................................31
4.2.1 Design Process ......................................................................................31
4.2.2 Specific Aspects of Systems..................................................................32
4.2.3 Sustainability and Institutional Capacity...............................................33
4.3 What Should a Water Management DSS Look Like? ...........................................34
5. References.............................................................................................................35
Appendces ................................................................................................................................51
A. Models Used in Decision Support Systems ...........................................................51
A.1 Hydrologic Models - Event-based.........................................................51
A.2 Hydrologic Models - Continuous ..........................................................52
A.3 River Hydraulics Models.......................................................................55
A.4 Urban Hydraulics Models .....................................................................57
A.5 Water Quality Models ...........................................................................59

i
A.6 Reservoir Operation Models .................................................................62
A.7 Groundwater Models.............................................................................65

ii
 Acronyms

BASINS Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources

CALSIM CALifornia Water Resources SImulation Model
CWMS Corps Water management System (HEC)
DAEWPS Danube Accident Emergency Warning and Prevention System
DBAM Danube Basin Alarm Model
DEM Digital Elevation Models
DSS Decision Support Systems
DWR California State Department of Water Resources
EMRL Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory
EU European Union
GIS Geographic Information System
GOR Government of Romania
GUI Graphic User Interface
HEC Hydrologic Engineering Center (USACE)
HMS Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC)
ICPDR International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River
PIAC Principal International Alert Centres
RAS River Analysis System (HEC)
ResSim Reservoir Simulation System (HEC)
FIA Flow Impact Analysis (HEC)
MAFWEP Ministry of Agriculture Forestry Water and Environment Protection
OASIS Operational Analysis and Simulation of Integrated Systems
OCL Operational Control Language
SEPIC Support to Enhance Privatization, Investment, and Competitiveness
SMS Surface Water Modeling System
USAID US Agency for International Development
USACE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
USFHWA U.S. Federal Highway Administration
WATMAN Water Management
WES Waterways Experiment Station (USACE)
WMS Watershed Modeling System
WRESL Water Resources Engineering Simulation Language

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1. Introduction
The USAID financed project Support to Enhance Privatization, Investment, and Competitiveness
(SEPIC) in the Water Sector of the Romanian Economy was initiated by the Ministry of
Agriculture Forestry Water and Environment Protection (MAFWEP) with the objectives of:

• Improving the management, quality, and sustainability of Romania’s valuable water

resources;
• Helping Romanian enterprises to become more profitable, competitive, and sustainable;
• Supporting MAFWEP’s efforts in implementing the Government of Romania’s (GOR’s)
National Strategy in terms of harmonization of the Romanian legal and regulatory
framework with that of the EU; and
• Extending the GOR’s capacity to make decisions on water allocation, manage floods,
droughts, and accidental spills.

The SEPIC Project has three components, the third of which is Trade and Investment Initiatives
for Modern Water and Disaster Management Systems. Under this component a system will be
developed to integrate meteorological and hydrological data and enable use of the resultant
information as a water management (WATMAN) tool. The WATMAN system will extend the
government’s capacity to make decisions on water allocation, manage floods, droughts, and
accidental spills. The suite of decision support tools required for integrated management will
include the aforementioned weather and flood forecasting models, linked to water allocation and
accidental spill models.

One of the first tasks in developing the WATMAN system is to undertake an International
survey of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) for Integrated Water Management describing
individual models and their respective applications, data requirements (including topographical
and cadastral information), use of Geographic Information System (GIS) platforms in data
management, analysis or presentation. The report will also describe international applications of
DSS models at the supra-basin (where there are inter-basins transfers), basin, and sub-basin
levels.

The report draws heavily upon and updates the work in the author’s previous reports on Decision
Support Systems (Watkins and McKinney, 1995) and River Basin Modeling (McKinney et al.,
1999).

2. Description of Decision Support Systems

2.1 Introduction to Decision Support Systems
What is a DSS? The classic definition of a DSS provided by Sprague and Carlson (1982) is “an
interactive computer-based support system that helps decision makers utilize data and models to
solve unstructured problems.” Key terms in this definition are: interactive, data, and models,

1
which are a recurring theme among developers of water management DSSs. Adelman (1992)
defined decision support systems (DSSs) as “interactive computer programs that utilize
analytical methods, such as decision analysis, optimization algorithms, program scheduling
routines, and so on, for developing models to help decision makers formulate alternatives,
analyze their impacts, and interpret and select appropriate options for implementation.” Poch et
al. (2003) define a DSS as “an intelligent information system that reduces the time in which
decisions are made, and improves the consistency and quality of those decisions.” Explicit in
these definitions is that DSSs integrate various technologies and aid in option selection; whereas
the implicit idea is that these are options for solving relatively large, unstructured problems.
Thus, one may think of a Water Resources Management DSS as:

A Decision Support System (DSS) is an integrated, interactive computer system,

consisting of analytical tools and information management capabilities, designed
to aid decision makers in solving relatively large, unstructured water resource
management problems.

In the context of this report, decision makers are the planners and managers of water resource
systems who are responsible for solving water-related problems or meeting water resource needs.
The objective of these decision makers is, among other things, to provide the reliable supply of
water with a quality appropriate for its use, production of hydropower, protection from floods,
and protection of ecosystems.

Three main subsystems must be integrated in an interactive manner in a DSS (Orlob, 1992; Close
et al., 2003): (1) a user-interface for dialog generation and managing the interface between the
user and the system; (2) a model management subsystem; and (3) an information management
subsystem. Considering this in more detail, DSS architecture consists of the following
components (see Figure 1):

• Data measurement – the tasks involved in data gathering;

• Data processing – the tasks involved in registration of measurements into databases and
their subsequent processing, retrieval, and storage;
• Analysis – the models used to infer the state of the system so that reasonable decision
alternatives can be formulated;
• Decision support – the gathering and merging of conclusions from knowledge-based and
numerical techniques and the interaction of users with the computer system through an
interactive and graphical user interface.
• Decision implementation – the formulation of actions to be implemented in solving a
specific problem.

The process begins with the collection and processing of data, followed by use of the data in the
analysis of various water resources problems. Then the analysis is used in conjunction with
expert advice and interpretation along with decision makers’ inputs to support the taking of a
decision or formulation of a plan. This process culminates in the implementation of the agreed
upon plan or decision. In practice this is not a linear, step-by-step process, but a cyclical process
with data entering the process, analysis being performed, and decisions being taken in an almost
continuous fashion.

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 Precipitation, Temperature, Humidity, Streamflow
Water Quality, Groundwater, Snow pack,
Evapotranspiration
Infrastructure control, Institutional
policies & incentives
Warnings, Alarms Data
Decision
Implementation Measurement

Decision
Support
System Data
Decision Processing
Database
MCDM Making
Data model
Operating rules Data display
Expert system Analysis
Optimization, Warnings
Risk management, Dispute Resolution Rainfall/runoff,
Flooding, Hydraulics, Water Allocation,
Water Pollution, Environmental Flows

Figure 1. Diagram of a general framework for a water resources decision support system.

DSSs for water resources problems began to appear in the mid-1970s and have been discussed in
the literature since the mid-1980s (Loucks et al., 1985a, 1985b; Labadie and Sullivan, 1986;
Loucks and da Costa 1991; Fedra, 1992; Georgakakos, and Martin, 1996; Watkins and
McKinney, 1995; Loucks, 1995; McKinney et al., 2000). Over the past decade, rapidly
advancing computational ability, the development of user-friendly software and operating
systems, and increased access to and familiarity with computers among decision makers has
made the use of computer models in water resources management commonplace. As noted by
Simonivic (1996) “The computer has moved out of data processing, through the user’s office
into knowledge processing.” Given the increasing complexity and disciplinary breadth of water
management problems, DSSs have become necessary to make models more useful. However,
the development and application of DSSs to water resources management is far from a mature
field for a number of reasons, including a lack of case studies in which the performance of DSSs
has been evaluated in appropriate institutional settings; the multidisciplinary nature of DSSs and
their theoretical underpinnings; and the lack of available methods to measure the effectiveness of
them.

2.2 Important Decisions in Water Management

Integrated water resources management requires the consideration of a wide scope of social,
economic and environmental aspects of resource use and protection. However, in the context of
the type of decisions to be considered here, we choose to focus on two principal areas of decision
making in water resources management:

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 • Emergency water management - involving floods or chemical spills; and
• Water regulation and allocation - involving water supply for municipalities, agriculture,
industry, hydropower production, and environmental protection.

Decision making regimes tend to be different for these two areas due to the difference in time
available for making decisions (hours in the first case and days to months in the second).

2.2.1 Emergency Water Management

Early Warning Systems - Early warning systems for floods or accidental chemical spills are
information systems designed to send automated hydrologic and water quality data regarding
water-related disasters to river basin planners, who combine them with meteorological data and
river basin models to disseminate hazard forecasts and formulate strategies to mitigate economic
damage and loss of human life. Early warning systems are typically comprised of the following
subsystems:

• Early warning subsystem - including the hardware and software to monitor and forecast
floods and accidental spills, and to collect, transmit, and disseminate data to disaster
management agencies;
• Risk information subsystem - including data-processing tools and analysis models to
assess the potential impact of impending hazardous events and facilitate the design of
preemptive mitigation strategies;
• Preparedness subsystem - including institutions responsible for raising awareness about
floods and chemical spills and for developing pre-disaster preparedness strategies; and
• Communication subsystem - including communication of timely information on
impending hazardous events, potential risk scenarios, and preparedness strategies to
vulnerable groups so that they may take appropriate mitigation measures.

Floods - Protection from flooding events requires higher dimension models and smaller time
steps than for most other water resource management models, such as municipal or agricultural
water supply, recreation, water quality, etc. Flood flows usually occur over short time intervals
(hours to days or weeks) making it impractical to model such events in multipurpose water
resource planning models using simple mass balances. Calculating flood inundation as a result
of flood wave propagation in a catchment requires two-dimensional modeling, rather than one-
dimensional modeling.

Structural measures (e.g., reservoirs, levees, flood proofing) and non-structural measures (e.g.,
land use controls and zoning, flood warning and evacuation plans) are used to protect against
floods. Upstream reservoir operators must provide storage capacity for flood protection and
emergency warning to populations living in downstream floodplains. These operators need to
know how much water to release and when in order to minimize expected flood damage
downstream. The flood flow and peak in a basin depend on flood storage capacity and flood
flow release policies. These can be determined by simulating flood events entering basin

4
reservoirs. Expected flood damage can be predicted if the distribution of peak flows and the
relationships between flood stage and damage, and flood stage and peak flow are known.

Accidental Chemical Spills - Accidental chemical spills are a major concern for areas that have
vulnerable riverine ecosystems and cities with vulnerable drinking-water supplies and weak spill
response capabilities. In order to provide emergency response capability to protect against
accidental spills, studies are performed to determine travel times in river reaches. The results of
these studies can be used to plan emergency responses to chemical spills into rivers, including
guiding decisions regarding closing and reopening of intakes to drinking-water systems. A
system for supporting response to accidental spills should include a database of potential spill
sites and locations of agricultural chemicals, oil tanks, pesticides, and hazardous wastes stored on
or near a river. The database should also include the bridges and rail lines which cross rivers and
often serve as transport for hazardous materials. From the use of such a DSS tool, spill
responders can quickly find directions to spill sites, emergency contacts and details about
chemicals and how they react with the river under various conditions. Spill responders can also
run computer simulations of spills to practice their response and determine how long it takes for
a spill to reach critical locations downstream. During a real spill, an emergency response team
would use the data to make decisions about deploying people and equipment.

Emergency planning for spills in rivers and lakes entails having advective, nonreactive,
nonmixing transport models capable of providing quick, worst-case scenarios of chemical
concentrations at critical points downstream of spill sites. These allow for planning and deciding
on alerts to be issued. More detailed, advective-dispersive, reactive modeling of the chemical
fate and transport in the river system typically follow after the immediate response actions are
taken.

2.2.2 Water Regulation, Allocation, and Quality

River Basin Management - In the area of general river basin management, DSSs help decision
makers with a myriad of problems, including:

• Operation of reservoirs for supply of water for various purposes including recreation,
municipal and industrial water use, instream flows, irrigation, and hydropower
production;
• Examination of the effects of land-use and land-management policies on water quality;
• Assessment of eutrophication in surface water bodies;
• Development of pollution control plans for river basins and estuaries, including
hydrodynamic and water quality impacts of alternative control strategies;
• Design and operation of wastewater treatment plants, i.e., what level of treatment is
necessary to meet water quality goals under specific flow conditions; and
• Management of river basins, including the evaluation of the interrelationships between
economic productivity and environmental degradation in a basin.

Lake and Reservoir Management - In the area of lake and reservoir management, support is
needed to make decisions regarding pollution control, water supply, and hydropower operation,

5
mitigation of climate change effects, reservoir eutrophication, phosphorus control strategies, and
operation of multiple reservoir systems. Different types of models are required to provide
support in this area, such as, water allocation models to determine the distribution of water for
economic production and environmental protection in a basin; or two- and three- dimensional
models to analyze water quality in lakes.

Non-Point Source Pollution – In this area decision support is needed to make plans for
agricultural chemical use or protection of vulnerable water bodies, stream and aquifers.
Modeling and managing agricultural non-point source pollution typically requires the use of a
distributed parameter watershed model. The data management and visualization capabilities are
needed to allowed decision makers to identify and analyze problem areas easily.

Groundwater and Conjunctive Use Management - Because decision makers are typically
required to consider a multitude of social, legal, economic, and ecological factors, DSSs have
great potential for improving the planning and management of conjunctive use (ground and
surface water) systems. This can require the integration of a number of simulation and
optimization models with graphic user interface capabilities to provide an adequate framework
for the discussion of water allocation conflicts in a river basin. Conjunctive use models and
multiobjective decision methods can be combined to provide decision support for inter-basin
water transfer planning allowing decision makers to analyze the social, economic, and
environmental impacts of water transfers. DSSs are valuable in facilitating the consideration of a
wide range of impacts, allowing decision makers to incorporate technical information into the
decision making process, and providing output which can be interpreted easily.

Water Treatment and Distribution Systems - The design and operation of water treatment and
distribution systems are also complex tasks in which the experience of the designer or operator is
critical. Typically, models of these systems have sacrificed physical accuracy so that solutions
could be obtained in a timely manner. User evaluation of trade-offs between model solvability
and accuracy in the design of water supply and distribution systems, evaluate investment options,
and demonstrate interaction between water quantity and quality. General network simulation
and optimization models can be used in scheduling and control methodology for water
distribution systems in urban distribution systems to determine proper structural changes to the
system that minimize disruption to existing customers. Recently, evolutionary methods, such as
genetic algorithms, have been used to solve realistic models of large urban water distribution
systems which are intractable with more traditional methods.

2.3 Technologies for Decision Making in Water Management

2.3.1 Simulation and Optimization Models

Basin-scale analyses are often undertaken using one of two types of models (McKinney et al.,
1999): ones that simulate water resources behavior in accordance with a predefined set of rules
governing water allocations and infrastructure operations, or ones that optimize and select
allocations and infrastructure based on an objective function and accompanying constraints.
Often the assessment of system performance can best be addressed with simulation models,

6
whereas, optimization models tend to be more useful when system improvement is the main
goal.

Basin-scale models that simulate the behavior of various hydrologic, water quality, economic, or
other variables under fixed water allocation and infrastructure management policies are often
used to assess the performance of water resources systems. A distinguishing feature of these
simulation models, as opposed to optimization models, is their ability to assess performance over
the long term. Consequently, simulation is the preferable technique to assess water resources
system responses to extreme, nonequilibrium conditions, and thereby to identify the system
components most prone to failure, or to evaluate system performance relative to a set of
sustainability criteria that may span decades. However, sustainability analysis has been
accomplished through optimization recently (Cai et al., 2002).

Models that optimize water resources based on an objective function and constraints must
include a simulation component, however rudimentary, with which to calculate flows and mass
balances. A distinct advantage of optimization models over simulation models is their ability to
incorporate social value systems in the allocation of water resources. However, to be adopted by
policy makers and system managers, optimal water allocations must agree with an infrastructure
operator’s perspective. This often requires that models be calibrated not only with respect to
physical parameters of the system being modeled, but also with the respect to the system
management, i.e., the operation and decision making process for the system. This later aspect is
often overlooked in model development and application and leads to poor acceptance of models
in practice.

In spite of the proliferation of computer technologies for decision support, classical simulation
and optimization models remain at the heart of most water resources DSSs. For the most part,
the models used in DSSs tend to have unwieldy input files and cryptic output files, making them
useful only to technical specialists. Wide use of these models and the vastly expanded access to
data have brought about the need for other technologies (e.g., databases and GUIs) to be
integrated into DSSs in order to make data accessible to models and to make inputs and results
understandable to analysts and decision makers. Unfortunately, except in a very few cases, most
systems, both DSSs and stand alone models, have yet to utilize the capabilities of modern
relational databases.

Simulation and optimization models used in water resources management have been reviewed by
several authors (e.g., Yeh, 1985; Wurbs, 1993; Wurbs, 1994; Wurbs, 1998; Yeh, 1992; Wagner,
1995; and Labadie, 2004). Yeh (1985) provided a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of
reservoir operation models with a strong emphasis on optimization methods. Wurbs (1993)
provided a review of a wide array of reservoir simulation and optimization models and evaluated
the usefulness of each approach for different decision-support situations. He hoped that his paper
would help practitioners choose the appropriate model from the overwhelming number of models
and modeling strategies which currently exist. Wurbs (1998) notes that common water resources
models, such as those discussed below, are often used as components of DSSs. However, the
models most frequently applied in water resources planning, design, and management do not
exhibit the characteristics of DSSs. Labadie (2004) points out the need to improve the
operational effectiveness and efficiency of water resource systems through the use of computer

7
modeling tools. He notes that the demand for this is increasing as performance-based
accountability in water management agencies increases and as operators and managers come to
rely more on modeling tools to respond to new environmental and ecological constraints for
which they have little experience to draw on.

Models used in decision support for integrated water management range from fully data oriented
models to fully process oriented models. The choice depends on the quantity and quality of data
available and the knowledge of important physical, chemical, biological, and economic processes
affecting the system. Data oriented models are represented by regression models or neural
networks (i.e., black box models). Process oriented models are represented by models which
have detailed representations of processes, but require few site specific data (i.e., white box
models).

Modeling projects tends to be complex and utilize a variety of data and analytical or
computational tools from various sources. Proper and careful management of modeling projects
can enhance the effectiveness with which models are developed, deployed, and used. The
modeling process is an iterative procedure involving specific steps (Waveren et al., 1999):

• Establish a project journal – to allow developers and users to see what was changed or
why a particular model run was made or what was learned. It allows third parties to
continue from the point at which any previous project terminated;
• Initiate the project – so that the problem to be modeled and the objectives that are to be
accomplished have clear definition;
• Select a model to be used – in light of the broader context in which the model will be
used. Some situations require very detailed modeling of physical or chemical processes,
while others require more attention to policy or economic aspects;
• Analyze the model – in light of the processes that will be modeled, the data available, and
the data required by the model;
• Test and evaluate the model – to determine its strengths and limitations;
• Interpret model results – Develop a plan on how the model is to be used, identifying the
input to be used, the time period(s) to be simulated, the quality of the results to be
expected, and the methods to be used to interpret the results; and
• Report the model results – to the client recognizing that they may only be interested in
some results and not the way they were obtained; and

2.3.2. Geographic Information Systems

Today's database systems provide comprehensive facilities for storing, retrieving, displaying and
manipulating data essential to the decision-making process. Two common data manipulation
and storage systems or tools are the relational database, which relates information in a tabular
way so that the rules of relational algebra can be applied, and the geographic database (or
geographic information system-GIS), which relates information pertaining to fundamental spatial
features such as points, lines, and polygons. GIS not only brings spatial dimensions into the
traditional water resources database, but also, more significantly, has the ability to better
integrate the various social, economic, and environmental factors related to water resources

8
planning and management for use in a decision-making process. GIS offers a spatial
representation of water resources systems, but currently few predictive and related analytical
capacities are available for solving complex water resources planning and management
problems. In order to create a truly useful DSS for water management, a data model with
geometric representations and spatial referencing is needed that has an open architecture to
facilitate the integration of GIS and models.

There are several strategies for coupling an environmental model to a GIS (McKinney and Cai,
2002), ranging from a loose coupling where data are transferred between models and GIS, and
each has separate database management capabilities and systems; to a tight coupling where data
management in the GIS and model are integrated and they share the same database. The tightest
coupling, and one which has yet to find efficient application in water resource modeling, is an
embedded system, in which modeling and data are embedded in a single framework. One of the
main reasons that embedded systems have yet to become useful is that many applications of
modeling in water resources management tend to require the solution of large sets of
simultaneous equations, something which GIS software, developed by geographers concerned
with static map images, is not well suited to perform. Another reason for the lack of very tight
coupling between GIS and models has been the lack of a data model that could easily represent a
river basin in GIS. Lately, this issue has been resolved by the development of the ArcHydro data
model (Maidment, 2002).

ArcHydro is a water resources data model that uses GIS to capture the essence of water resource
systems in a manner that supports modeling. The ArcHydro data model defines a data structure
of classes, such as watersheds, cross sections, monitoring points and time series in a manner that
reflects the underlying physical watershed. Also defined in ArcHydro are relationships between
the data, so that a river basin (catchment) may know which point represents its outlet, or a
monitoring point may be aware of time series records for that location. ArcHydro also has a
toolset to perform operations using the data, and visualize time series data.

ArcHydro is a data model for water resources which can facilitate tight coupling of water
resource models and GIS. ArcHydro supports hydrologic simulation modeling by establishing
connectivity between hydrologic features in the landscape which can be used to direct the flow
of water between features in a model (Whitaker, 2004). The ArcHydro toolset can also calculate
certain attributes useful in models, either through attribute accumulation routines, through
relationships, network associations, or by direct calculation of parameters such as the length
from a point on the network to the outlet of the river system. Water resource system modeling
can be accomplished by exchanging data between ArcHydro and an independent model attached
to ArcHydro using a dynamic linked library (Maidment, 2002). The Danish Hydraulics Institute
has developed a time series manager that fits into the ArcHydro toolset and works with all of the
feature classes defined in the ArcHydro data model (DHI, 2004). The ArcHydro data model is
being used for water resources planning in the Rio Grande basin shared between the U.S. and
Mexico (Patino et al., 2004) and the South Florida Water Management District for the basis of an
enterprise GIS database to support flood control, natural system restoration, operations decision
support, and regional modeling projects (PBS&J, 2004)

9
2.3.3 Expert Systems

Consisting of a set of rules and user-supplied data which interact through an inference engine, an
expert or knowledge-based system is able to derive or deduce new facts or data from existing
facts and conditions. Expert-system shells and programming languages have become widely
available allowing users to define databases and rule sets. Some water resources DSS designers
have though that expert systems would be a powerful complement to numerical and spatial
analysis tools. This, however, has not turned out to be the case and few expert systems
applications are in practical use today in the field of water resources management.

Fedra (1993a) reviewed the use of expert systems in water resources and identified three types of
applications: purely knowledge driven systems, expert systems components in an intelligent front
end, and fully embedded expert systems. Of these, intelligent front ends have been the most
common. In general, they assist the user in selecting the appropriate numerical model or
technique, specifying input parameter values, and interpreting model output. Lam and Swayne
(1993) presented such an approach to the integration of virtually any computer technology useful
to water resources planners. The role of the expert system is to provide an intelligent interface
between the model and data, as well as descriptive dialogue between the user and machine.
Palmer and Spence (1992) used the programming language PROLOG and natural language to
represent knowledge about water resources management. Their purpose was to help users who
were unfamiliar with formal database management or computer programming to access
hydrologic and other data. Other examples of expert systems as intelligent front ends were given
by Simonovic (1991) for open channel flow measurement, Simonovic (1992) for reservoir
management, and Bender and Simonovic (1994) for long-range water supply forecast modeling.

Fully embedded or hybrid expert systems are typically problem-oriented rather than
methodology-oriented. Whereas intelligent front ends enhance the use of models in a DSS, fully
embedded expert systems enhance model results. McKinney, et al. (1993) proposed, and Burgin
(1995) implemented, an expert information system for Texas water planning, in which expert
systems and water resources planning models were used to enhance the modeling capacity of
GIS. Hidden from the user, the rules invoked by the expert system eliminated planning options
which did not meet certain qualitative constraints supplied by the user. Other embedded expert
systems have been developed for irrigation systems planning (Nir, 1991) and for crop planning
during droughts (Raman et al., 1992). Each of these agricultural expert systems was used to
enhance simulation and optimization results.

Expert systems have found several applications in water supply and sewerage operating and
maintenance. Mainly because solutions to these problems require gathering difficult information
based on operator’s experience, the variety of control mechanisms, and frequent changes in
network topology (Leon et al., 2000). Shepherd and Ortolano (1996) describe an expert system
for water-supply system operations decision support that evaluates operating plans and provides
feedback, including suggestions for improvement, warnings, and alternatives. Leon et al. (2000)
developed a hybrid expert system to minimize the pumping costs in the Seville City water-supply
system. Hahn et al. (2002) describe the development of a knowledge base expert system for
prioritizing sewer pipeline inspections used to target critical areas within a sewer drainage
system.

10
Stanciulescu (1997) noted that the complex, non-linearity of environmental systems leads to
uncertainty and difficulty in applying classical modeling methods. He presents a new approach to
modeling and control of these systems, centered on a combination of mathematical model
(written in Mathcad) and heuristic models (an expert system shell written in TurboProlog). The
model was used to study the dynamics of bird populations in the Danube delta, including a
knowledge base of behavioral, control and decision heuristic rules. Stanciulescu (1999) extended
this system to include additional modeling capability and introduced the use of an expert system
shell, written in the Clips language,

Expert systems have been applied to the problem of assessing watershed conditions considering
numerous watershed functions, anthropogenic influences, and management concerns (Dai et al.,
2004; Reynolds et al., 1996; Schmoldt and Rauscher, 1996; Reynolds, 1999). Representative of
these applications is the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system (Reynolds,
2002; USDA, 2004) is an application framework for knowledge-based decision support of
ecological assessments at any geographic scale. The system integrates a GIS as well as
knowledge-based reasoning using the NetWeaver fuzzy logic engine (Saunders and Miller, 2004)
and decision modeling technologies in the Windows environment to provide decision support for
adaptive management of ecosystems. The majority of the applications reported are to landscape
suitability and ecosystem restoration projects.

2.3.4 Multiobjective Analysis Tools

Water resources problems are inherently multifaceted with conflicting uses of water where
tradeoffs must be made between stakeholders with differing goals. Multiobjective modeling
methods have been used for several decades to determine the tradeoffs between various
objectives in these problems. Several books devoted to the subject of multiobjective planning,
many with applications to water resources problems, have been published over the past three
decades, including Haimes, et al. (1975), Keeney and Raiffa (1976), Cohon (1978), Zeleny
(1982), and Steuer (1986). Due to the conceptual difficulties involved in using multiobjective
models (i.e., selecting criteria, specifying satisficing values, and evaluating trade-offs), several
researchers have developed multiobjective decision support tools which meet two of the three
requirements of a DSS. Namely, these tools provide analysis and interpretation capabilities, but
not necessarily information management capabilities. Nonetheless, the potential of these tools in
a fully developed DSS has become well known.

Examples of multiobjective decision support in water resources include Bogardi and Duckstein
(1992), who presented an interactive multiobjective analysis method to embed the decision
maker's implicit preference function; Ridgley and Rijsberman (1992), who employed
multicriteria decision aid for a policy analysis of a Rhine estuary; and Theissen and Loucks
(1992), who presented an interactive water resources negotiation support system. In these two
examples, the authors concluded that the use of multicriteria evaluation effectively provided a
group with decision support for the analysis.

11
Other work has focused on integrating technologies to support multiobjective analysis.
Simonovic et al. (1992) presented a rule-based expert system to facilitate and improve the choice
of multiobjective programming weights to be used in a reservoir operation model. Short- and
long-term operating goals represented the trade-offs in the model. Lee et al. (1991) developed a
DSS for dredge-fill management based on a modified fuzzy-composite programming method for
multiobjective problems under uncertainty. Values of risk and cost were transformed into fuzzy
numbers to incorporate uncertainties into the trade-off analysis.

Mahmoud and Garcia (2000) developed a multi-criteria evaluation system for evaluating an array
of different management alternatives for anadromous fish migration along the Sacramento River
in California. Several methods were compared and a “weighting approach” was found to be
preferred. Mahmoud and Garcia (2000) point out that choosing among multi-criteria evaluation
methods to rank multiple alternatives is critical not only because each method produces different
rankings, but also choosing a methodology is subjective, based upon the predisposition of the
decision maker.

2.4 Characteristics of a Water Management Decision Support

System

2.4.1 Components of a Water Management DSS

Decision support systems (DSS) are customized software applications that add value to water
resources models and help managers to make informed decisions using information generated by
water resources models. As discussed earlier, a water management DSS would likely consist of
the following components (see Fig. 1):

• Data Measurement and Collection System receiving various data (e.g., water level and
temperature, precipitation, air temperature, concentrations, etc.) from stations throughout
the river basins being managed, as well as weather data and forecasts;
• Data Processing System to store the data related to the processes of interest in the basins,
both spatial and feature related as well as time series data;
• Analytical System of models and tools designed to predict watershed response and
provide river forecasts, using data from the Data Collection System, and historical and
river basin data needed to calibrate hydrologic models.
• Decision Formulation and Selection System for gathering and merging conclusions from
knowledge-based and numerical techniques and the interaction of users with the computer
system through an interactive and graphical user interface.
• Decision implementation System for disseminating decisions regarding water use under
normal conditions, and flood warnings, river forecasts, and disaster response in affected
areas.

All of these components are inextricably linked, such that the system’s effectiveness will be
significantly diminished if one or more of the components is not designed and implemented to
meet the overall demands of the DSS.

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2.4.2 Issues to be Addressed in Constructing a Water Management DSS
There are a number of issues related to water management that must be considered when
designing a DSS for effective decision making in this situation. First, water management takes
place in a multidisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional environment and the problems must be
approached from an integrated perspective (McKinney, 2003). Second, water management must
be considered at the scale of the river basin in order to internalize the major, potential
externalities between activities of users in different parts of a basin. Finally, the importance of
scale effects in trying to model the integrated effects of water uses across an entire basin must be
addressed.

Integrated Water Resources Management - Water resources management includes both

structural interventions and nonstructural rules and policies. Structural interventions include the
design and construction of physical works under criteria of safety, workability, durability, and
economy, including short-term, operation and maintenance activities with existing structures and
long-term investments in new structures. Nonstructural interventions combine optimal operating
rules of hydrologic systems, economic optimization of water allocation, and understanding
community behavior and institutional processes related to the formation and support of agencies
making decisions about water management. These institutional directives, economic/financial
incentives, and hydrologic system operating rules have greatly modified the traditional, structural
approach to water management. The interdisciplinary nature of water problems requires the
integration of technical, economic, environmental, social, and legal aspects into a coherent
framework for decision making purposes. The requirements of users as well as those relating to
the prevention and mitigation of water-related hazards should constitute an integral part of the
integrated water management process.

Water allocation between competing uses is best addressed at the river basin scale through the
use of combined economic and hydrological models. DSSs for integrated water management at
the basin scale must adopt an interdisciplinary approach and a number of barriers must be
overcome:

• Hydrological models often use simulation techniques, whereas most economic analyses
are performed with optimization procedures;
• Political and administrative boundaries of economic systems are rarely the same as those
of hydrological systems; and
• Different spatial development scales, and time horizons are frequently encountered in
economic versus hydrologic models.

A DSS for water allocation at the basin scale should be designed to provide answers to water
policy questions, including socio-economic issues, including:

• Transaction costs (e.g., information, monitoring, contracting and enforcement);

• Productivity of water and net benefits of different water users (e.g., agricultural, domestic
and industrial use); and
• Demand for and economic value of water (e.g., production costs and willingness to pay).

13
River Basin Systems - Fig. 2 shows a schematic diagram of the components of a river basin
system, including the sources of water supply (groundwater and surface water), the delivery
system (river, canal and piping network), the water users (agricultural, municipal, and industrial),
and the drainage collection system (surface and subsurface). The atmosphere forms the river
basin’s upper bound, and mass and energy exchange through this boundary determines the
hydrologic characteristics of the basin. However, the state of the basin (e.g., reservoir and aquifer
storage, and water quality) and the physical processes within the basin (e.g., stream flow,
evapotranspiration, infiltration and percolation) are also affected by human actions, including
impoundment, diversion, irrigation, drainage, and discharges from urban areas. Therefore, a
DSS for water management in a river basin should include not only natural and physical
processes, but artificial “hardware” (physical projects) and “software” (management policies) as
well. An ideal DSS needs to model human behavior in response to policy initiatives. This may
be as simple as a price elasticity of demand coefficient or something more complex (such as a
model of farmers’ simultaneous choice of optimal water use, crops, and water application
technology). The essential relations within each component and the interrelations between these
components in the river basin must be considered in DSSs.

The DSS needs to model the interactions between water allocation, agricultural productivity,
non-agricultural water demand, and resource degradation to estimate the social and economic
gains from improved water allocation and use efficiency. It should:

• Provide a description of the underlying physical processes,

• Provide a description of the institutions and rules that govern the flows of water and
pollutants through the river basin,
• Depict the water demand sites along the river basin, including consumptive use locations
for agricultural, municipal, industrial, and in-stream water uses (incorporating also
reservoirs and aquifers); and
• Evaluate the economic benefits of water use by applying production and benefit functions
with respect to water for the agricultural, environment, urban, and industrial sectors.

14
 Precipitation Runoff Other sources
inflow Downstream economic
outflow and environmental
River reaches & reservoirs
Instream uses: hydropower, recreation, requirements
aquifer-river and dilution return
interflow
diversion to offstream Evapotranspiration and
other consumptive uses
Consumptive Distribution
use system
Surface Drainage
Surface precipitation water reuse
industry water
Industrial & Drainage
Agricultural
municipal Treatment disposal &
demand sites
demand sites treatment
spillage
groundwater groundwater
percolation
Groundwater tail water
seepage pumping
return flow Drainage
drainage
seepage collection
system
river precipitation deep percolation
depletion
Groundwater

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the components of a river basin system (adapted from
McKinney et al., 1999).

Scaling of Processes - Fig. 3 illustrates a framework for river basin management modeling,
including relationships and decisions at various scales (basin, agency, and user). Water can be
used for in-stream purposes (hydropower generation, recreation, waste dilution, etc.) as well as
off-stream purposes (agricultural and municipal and industrial (M&I) water uses). Integrated
water management attempts to maximize the socio-economic benefits to the basin stakeholders,
such as the economic value of M&I water use, profit from irrigation, and benefits from in-stream
water uses, but also minimize environmental damages due to waste discharges, irrigation
drainage, and negative impacts on in-stream uses.

At one level, institutional directives such as water rights and economic incentives (e.g., water
price, crop prices, and penalties on waste discharge and irrigation drainage) constrain or induce
hydrologic system operations and M&I and agricultural water use decisions. The management
of water quantity and quality in a basin is based on the operation of reservoirs, aquifers, and
conjunctive surface and ground water systems. The connections between water supply and
demand and between upstream and downstream users are important considerations when
considering return flows in the basin. The regulation of spatially distributed flow sources,
pollutants, and water demands have to be considered in a water management DSS and
mathematical models must be integrated over the proper scale within the river basin network
(basin, regional, or local scale).

15
 Natural conditions: Climate, hydrology, geography
Socio-economic conditions: Institutions & policies, investments

Socio-economic
Basin scale development

Water withdrawal Instream uses

and
environmental Food security Ecosystem
flows sustainability

Water agency
Production
Water distribution scale and profit

Water and soil quality

Water user
Scale Crop yield
and area
User water demand &
management

Return flow & pollutant

Other inputs
discharges

Figure 3. Framework for river basin modeling at various scales (adapted from McKinney
and Cai, 2002).

A water management DSS at the basin scale should:

• Integrate physical and policy relationships in an endogenous system that will adapt to the
environmental, ecological, socio-economic, and legal-political status of the basin;
• River basin networks form the basis upon which mathematical models are built (including
e.g., water supply system, delivery system, water users system, waste water disposal and
treatment system, and the connections between these subsystems);
• Spatial and temporal distribution of water flow and pollutant transport in the basin are
represented in the models at appropriate scales, and water demands from all water-using
sectors and the inter-sectoral water allocation policies;
• Economic net-benefits are evaluated (including ecological values) from water use in
municipalities, agriculture and industry; and
• Policy instruments are incorporated, including regulations, economic incentives and
voluntary arrangements (e.g. for pollution control, water conservation or ecosystem
protection).

16
3. Available Decision Support Systems
This section focuses on systems which meet the criteria of DSS discussed in the previous section
and are generally available either at no cost or for a license fee. Several systems may be missing
from the list or omitted, generally because they are obsolete and have not been upgraded or
maintained, or they are no longer distributed by the developers.

3.1 Emergency Water Management Decision Support Systems

3.1.1 Flood Management Decision Support Systems

CWMS (Fritz, J.A., et al., 2002) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “Corps Water
Management System” (CWMS) is an automated water management information system. The
system is comprised of an integrated system of hardware and software that begins with the
receipt of hydromet, watershed, and infrastructure data which are used to determine the
hydrologic response of a watershed, including reservoir inflows and local uncontrolled
downstream flows. Reservoir inflows are processed to compute releases to meet reservoir and
downstream operation goals. River profiles are computed, inundated areas mapped, and flood
impacts analyzed. Various future precipitation scenarios can be considered, hydrologic response
altered, reservoir release rules investigated, and alternative infrastructure conditions evaluated.

CWMS uses a relational database (ORACLE) and the models incorporated in the system include
HEC-HMS (hydrologic modeling), HEC-RAS (river analysis), HEC-ResSim (reservoir
evaluation) and HEC-FIA (flow impact analysis). Access to the CWMS components is
accomplished through a GUI which integrates the pieces of CWMS into one package. It includes
mechanisms to evaluate the quality of incoming data, visualize information in time and space,
facilitate model parameter adjustments, control and execute simulation models, and compare the
results of different scenarios.

CWMS is distributed by the US Army Corp of Engineers to their staff offices. It runs on Sun
UNIX-based workstations. CWMS has been deployed to over 35 Corps District and Division
offices, including Nashville, TN (Barron, 2003).

SMS (EMRL, 2004) - The Surface Water Modeling System (SMS) has been developed by the
Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory (EMRL) at Brigham Young University in
cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station (WES), and
the US Federal Highway Administration (USFHWA). SMS is an interface providing access to
one-, two-, and three-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling software, including pre- and post-
processor software for surface water modeling. SMS models allow calculation of water surface
elevations and flow velocities for shallow water flow problems, for both steady-state or dynamic
conditions. Additional applications include the modeling of contaminant migration, salinity
intrusion, and sediment transport (scour and deposition). SMS license fees are $9,250 for a
single user including all modules and interfaces.

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WMS (EMRL, 2004) - Similar to SMS and GMS, the Watershed Modeling System (WMS) has
been developed by the Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory (EMRL) at Brigham
Young University. WMS is a graphical modeling environment for watershed hydrology and
hydraulics. WMS also includes tools for automatically delineating watersheds and sub-basins
including a direct linkage with ArcGIS. WMS license fees are $4,600 for a single user including
all modules and interfaces.

3.1.2 Accidental Spill Decision Support Systems

DBAM (Gils and Groot, 2002; Gils et al, 2004) - The Danube Accident Emergency Warning and
Prevention System (DAEWPS) communicates information about transboundary flood or
accidental spills events in the Danube basin. The “Danube Basin Alarm Model” (DBAM) is an
operational model for the DAWEPS for simulating the travel time and expected peak
concentrations of substances released during accidental spills. The DBAM was designed to
provide a fast assessment of the effects of a spill using limited and readily available data. The
Rhine Alarm Model (RAM) was used as the basis for DBAM, but DBAM goes one step further
and calculates the spreading of pollution across the river (Greencross, 2003). DBAM was
developed by an international consortium led by the Hungarian water agency VITUKI and
including, among others, Delft Hydraulics specialists. DBAM was distributed to all the Danube
Principal International Alert Centers (PIACs) in January 1999, and the model is operational in 11
Danube countries. The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River
(ICPDR) is preparing the full-scale calibration of the model (Gils et al., 2004).

The Hungarian PIAC tested DBAM for simulating the pollution impact of a spill of pesticide
into the Danube which caused significant fish-kills and drinking water supply problems in
neighboring villages (Pinter and Hartong, 2004). The movement of the contamination in the
Hungarian stretch of the Danube was simulated and the time evolution of the peak concentrations
was well modeled. On the other hand, the magnitude of the peaks exceeded what was actually
observed in the lowermost section of the river in Hungary.

The water balance computation in DBAM is based on measured flows for a number of stations.
In between those stations, incremental flows are assumed proportional to the increase of the
catchment area along the river. River cross section and slope data are used in Manning’s
equation to compute river flow. Discharge and velocity are calculated on the basis of actual
hydrological input data: observed values of either the water level or the discharge at selected
hydrological stations at the time of an accident.

The DBAM software consists of three main parts:

• A user interface program that reads network data and allows the user to perform
selections and input data on accidental spills, and run simulations.
• A model program that reads the system input data defining the river and the case-
dependent input files defining the spill and associated hydrology. It produces output files
containing simulation results at selected locations and times.

18
 • A result display program that reads the simulation result files together with river network
data and produces graphics and tables.

RiverSpill (Samuels et al., 2003; SAIC, 2003) - RiverSpill is a GIS (ArcView 3.2) based system
that models the real-time transport of constituents within a river system. RiverSpill calculates
time of travel and concentration based on real time stream flow measurements, decay, and
dispersion of constituents introduced into surface waters. RiverSpill contains the following
capabilities: Release Type - Instantaneous or Continuous release; Agent Type - Chemical or
Biological Agents; and Solution Type - Peak or non-Peak concentration. By selecting a location
on a river to introduce a chemical or biological constituent, the model performs the following
functions: Tracks the contaminant constituent under real time flow conditions to a water supply
intake; determines the concentration of contaminant as it decays and disperses in the river;
associates an intake to a water treatment plant; and identifies the population served by the plant.
Instantaneous and complete mixing of the pollutant in the river water column is the most
important assumption in RiverSpill. Any deviation from these conditions requires detailed
analysis of physical and chemical processes. The model is currently operational for the
continental U.S. and depends on several U.S. government databases. This same analysis could
be using an ArcHydro representation of a watershed (personal communication, Samuels, 2004).

WQModel (Whiteaker and Goodall 2003; Whiteaker, 2004) - Whiteaker and Goodall (2003) and
Whiteaker (2004) report the development of a water quality modeling module (“dll”) attached to
an ArcHydro representations of a river basin. In WQModel, mass is passed to downstream
locations in a basin and decays according to travel time and decay coefficients. The decay rate
represents the loss of mass due to biological decay, sorption, uptake, etc, as material moves
downstream. Accumulation of mass in lakes and other water bodies can also be calculated
assuming the lake has constant inflow equal to its outflow, and that mass entering the lake is
instantaneous and perfectly mixed within the lake.

3.2 Water Allocation Decision Support Systems

Aquarius (Diaz et al., 1997) - AQUARIUS was developed at the Department of Civil
Engineering at Colorado State University in conjunction with the U.S Forest Service.
AQUARIUS is a temporal and spatial allocation model for managing water among competing
uses. The model is driven by economic efficiency which requires the reallocation of all flows
until the net marginal return of all water uses is equal. The model is implemented in C++ under
an object oriented programming framework, where each system component (e.g., reservoir,
demand area, diversion point, river reach) is an object in the programming environment. In the
GUI, the components are represented by icons, which can be dragged and dropped from the
menu creating instances of the objects on the screen. These can be positioned anywhere on the
screen or removed. Once components are placed on the screen, they are linked by river reaches
and conveyance structures. The model does not include groundwater or water quality.

The model performs optimization to identify tradeoffs between water uses by examining the
feasibility of reallocating water to alternative uses. Each water use is represented by an
exponential demand curve (i.e., a marginal benefit function). The model is formulated as a

19
quadratic programming model with a linear constraint set. Costs of water use are not explicitly
considered in the model. The model could be used to evaluate net benefits by subtracting costs
from benefits in the individual benefit functions. From the model documentation, it is apparent
that making significant modifications to the model or its structure would be very difficult. Input
to and output from the model is through user entered values and ASCII text files, respectively,
and there appears to be no connection to spreadsheets or databases.

Although the present version of the model implements only a monthly time step, Aquarius was
conceived to simulate the allocation of water using any time interval, including days, weeks,
months, and time intervals of nonuniform lengths. Aquarius can be used in a full deterministic
optimization mode, for general planning purposes, or in a quasi-simulation mode, with restricted
foresight capabilities.

The software runs on PCs under the Windows environment. Usage is free for government
agencies and for teaching and research purposes. It has been used mainly by the US forest
service in various water management and ecosystem management problems.

Aquatool (Andreu, et al., 1991; Andreu, et al., 2003; Andreu, 2004) – Aquatool consists of a
series of modules integrated in a system in which a control unit allows the graphical definition of
a system scheme, database control, utilization of modules and graphical analysis of results.
Modules include: surface and ground water flow simulation; single- and multi-objective
optimization of water resources; hydrologic time series analysis; risk based WRS management.
Water quality is not included. All documentation is in Spanish.

CALSIM (DWR, 2004) - The CALifornia Water Resources SImulation Model (CALSIM) was
developed by the California State Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the United States
Bureau of Reclamation for planning and management of the California State Water Project and
the U.S. Central Valley Project. CALSIM is a hybrid linear optimization model which translates
the unimpaired (i.e. natural) stream-flows into impaired streamflows, taking into account
reservoir operating rules and contract water demands exerted at model nodes (Quinn et al.,
2004). CALSIM uses a mixed-integer linear programming solver to route water through the
river network at each time step (in contrast to the traditional Out-of-Kilter algorithm of ARSP
and OASIS or the more efficient Lagrangian approach of ModSim). The model code is written
in Water Resources Engineering Simulation Language (WRESL), a high-level programming
language developed by the DWR, and the system of WRESL equations is solved using a
proprietary solver XA (Sunset Software Inc.). The model is used to simulate existing and
potential water allocation and reservoir operating policies and constraints that balance water use
among competing interests (Quinn et al., 2004). Policies and priorities are implemented through
the use of user-defined weights applied to the flows in the system. Simulation cycles at different
temporal scales allow the successive implementation of constraints. The model can simulate the
operation of relatively complex environmental requirements and various state and federal
regulations. CALSIM is in a developmental state at the present time, and it is mentioned here to
illustrate the type of large-scale DSS being contemplated for the California water system and to
contrast some of its characteristics with other systems.

CALSIM, OASIS, RiverWare, and ModSim are similar in that they (Loucks et al., 2003):

20
 • all use a high level language with syntax and logical operators;
• are written to simple text files which are subsequently parsed and interpreted;
• use rule-based or IF-THEN-ELSE conditional structures;
• are designed to be easy for planners and operators to use without the need for
reprogramming;
• allow adaptive and conditional rules which are dependent on current system state
variable information;
• include constructs for assigning targets, guidelines and constraints, along with their
associated priorities; and
• include a goal seeking capability.

Similar to several other systems, CALSIM allows specification of objectives and constraints in
strategic planning and operations without the need for reprogramming of the complex model
(Loucks et al., 2003). CALSIM uses WRESL to define the objective function and constraints,
similar to the OCL (Operational Control Language) used in OASIS and the Policy Editor
employed in RiverWare. In ModSim, the optimization model is formulated directly through the
GUI with no need for a modeling language, but with supplemental features of the optimization
defined through the PERL scripting language. These various scripting languages allow planners
and operators to specify targets, objectives, guidelines, constraints, and their associated priorities
in ways familiar to them.

CALSIM lacks a comprehensive GUI for constructing and editing the river basin system
topology. The model does not link to GIS at this time. CALSIM does not seem to be generally
available for use; however, the development of this DSS serves as a good model for building
other DSSs.

DELFT-TOOLS (Delft Hydraulics, 2004) – Delft-Tools is a framework for decision support

developed by Delft Hydraulics for the integrating water resources simulation programs.
Functions of the system include scenario management, data entry, and interactive network design
from map data, object-oriented database set-up, presentation, analysis and animation of results
on maps. DELFT-TOOLS integrates the Delft Hydraulics models: SOBEK, RIBASIM and
HYMOS. SOBEK is a one-dimensional river simulation model that can be used for flood
forecasting, optimization of drainage systems, control of irrigation systems, sewer overflow
design, ground-water level control, river morphology, salt water intrusion and surface water
quality. RIBASIM (River Basin Simulation Model) is a river basin simulation model for linking
water inputs to water-uses in a basin. It can be used to model infrastructure design and operation
and demand management in terms of water quantity and water quality. HYMOS is a time series
information management system linked to the Delft Hydraulics models.

EPIC (McKinney and Savitsky, 2001; Schleuter et al., 2004) – EPIC (originally developed by
the USAID project “Environmental Policies and Institutions for Central Asia”) determines
optimal water allocation in a river basin by multi-objective optimization in monthly time steps.
Transport of conservative substances, e.g., salt, and management of generated hydroelectricity
can also be optimized with the model. Water management alternatives can be developed for a
time period of up to 15 years based on varying supplies and changing requirements of the water
users.

21
Models created in EPIC perform optimization calculations for operation of river networks
according to a ranked list of objectives. EPIC provides an interface for automatic network and
model creation, as well as data input, input of constraints on reservoirs, channel flow and
salinity, setting of the objective weights and visualization of results. The modeling system
generates nonlinear optimization model files for solution by the General Algebraic Modeling
System - GAMS (Brooke et al., 1998). The main optimization criterion of EPIC is to minimize
deficits of water delivery to users; other criteria include satisfying environmental flows, and
maximizing reservoir overyear storage (McKinney & Savitsky, 2001). Policy decisions are
modeled through changes in the weights on the various objective terms. A detailed description
of the EPIC modeling system for river, salt, and energy management and its application to the
Aral Sea basin can be found in McKinney and Kenshimov (2000) and McKinney and Savitsky
(2001).

Applications of the EPIC modeling system for water management modeling have been primarily
in the Aral Sea basin focusing on the Syrdarya (McKinney and Kenshimov, 2000). EPIC was
used to determine water allocation tradeoffs between the needs of upstream hydroenergy
production and downstream irrigation modeled on a one year basis (Antipova et al., 2002). The
results were used to determine compensation for a reduction of energy production in favor of
irrigation. Schleuter et al. (2004) applied EPIC to the Amudarya river to develop water
allocation scenarios as the hydrological basis for ecological impact assessment. The model
accurately represented current water allocation for the entire basin as well as a higher resolution
description for the delta region and detailed operation calculations for the four-body
Tyuyamuyun reservoir.

Mike-Basin (DHI, 2004) – MIKE-BASIN couples ArcView GIS with hydrologic modeling to
address water availability, water demands, multi-purpose reservoir operation, transfer/diversion
schemes, and possible environmental constraints in a river basin. MIKE-BASIN uses a quasi-
steady-state mass balance model with a network representation for hydrologic simulations and
routing river flows in which the network arcs represent stream sections and nodes represent
confluences, diversions, reservoirs, or water users. ArcView is used to display and edit network
elements. Water quality simulation assuming advective transport and decay can be modeled.
Groundwater aquifers can be represented as linear reservoirs. Current developments are
underway to utilize the functionality of ArcGIS-9 in MIKE-BASIN.

Basic input to MIKE-BASIN consists of time series data of catchment run-off for each tributary,
reservoir characteristics and operation rules of each reservoir, meteorological time series, and
data pertinent to water demands and rights (for irrigation, municipal and industrial water supply,
and hydropower generation), and information describing return flows. The user can define
priorities for diversions and extractions from multiple reservoirs as well as priorities for water
allocation to multiple users. Reservoir operating policies can be specified by rule curves
defining the desired storage volumes, water levels and releases at any time as a function of
existing storage volumes, the time of the year, demand for water and possible expected inflows.

Water quality modeling in MIKE-BASIN is based on steady, uniform flow within each river
reach and a mass balance accounting for inputs of constituents, advective transport and reaction

22
within the reach. Complete mixing downstream of each source and at tributary confluences is
assumed. Non-point pollution sources are handled in the model as well as direct loading from
point sources. The model accounts for the following water quality parameters: biochemical
oxygen demand, dissolved oxygen, ammonia, nitrate, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus. Non-
point loads are represented using an area loading method accounting for the nitrogen and
phosphorous loads originating from small settlements, livestock and arable lands assuming
certain unit loads from each category.

MIKE-BASIN runs on Windows based PCs. First year license fees for are $3,200 / $10,000
(Single Node/Floating License) and the annual renewal fee is $800 / $2,500 (A Single Node
license is restricted to running on one machine. A Floating License allows up to five concurrent
sessions running on different nodes on a network). The software is sold by a U.S. subsidiary in
Pennsylvania.

MIKE-BASIN is currently being used by the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) and
the Bureau of Reclamation surface water budget models for various river basins in Idaho,
ElectroPeru for real-time decision support system for reservoir operation and optimization , the
government of Sabah, Malaysia for Environmental Planning, the Gold Coast, Australia
government for the Gold Coast Drought Management Strategy, the Italian government for
developing the Piedmonte Water Resources Action Plan, the Vietnamese government for support
to Capacity Building of Water Resources Sector Institutes, the Honduran government for a
Decision Support System for Water Resources, and the Chinese government for the Yangtze
River and Estuary Study.

Czech DSS – MIKE-BASIN was used to create a DSS for development of national water
management plans for meeting the legal requirements of European environmental directives
(Krejciks, J., and S. Vanecek, 2000). The DSS includes data and information and modeling tools
(Mike-Basin, ArcView and a database) to:

• Provide a national overview of river systems, pollution sources, water quality conditions,
water supply and waste water treatment facilities, and options for improvements;
• Assess water quality conditions and estimate the costs of implementing various scenarios;
• Identify least cost strategies for meeting requirements of water supply and wastewater
treatment directives; and
• Estimate economic and financial implications of EU accession

ModSim (Labadie et al., 2000; Shannon, et al., 2000 ; Dai and Labadie, 2001; Labadie, 2004) –
ModSim is a generalized river basin DSS and network flow model developed at Colorado State
University with capability of incorporating physical, hydrological, and
institutional/administrative aspects of river basin management, including water rights. ModSim
is structured as a DSS, with a graphical user interface (GUI) allowing users to create a river basin
modeling networks by clicking on icons and placing system objects in a desired configuration on
the display. Through the GUI, the user represents components of a water resources system as a
capacitated flow network of nodes (diversions points, reservoirs, points of inflow/outflow,
demand locations, stream gages, etc.) and arcs (canals, pipelines, and natural river reaches).
ModSim can perform daily scheduling, weekly, operational forecasting and monthly, long-range

23
planning. User-defined priorities are assigned for meeting diversion, instream flow, and storage
targets. ModSim employs an optimization algorithm at each time step to solve for flow in the
entire network to achieve minimum cost while satisfying mass balance at the nodes and
maintaining flows through the arcs within required limits. Conjunctive use of surface and
ground water can be modeled with a stream-aquifer component linked to response coefficients
generated with the MODFLOW groundwater simulation model (Fredrick et al., 1998). ModSim
can be run for daily, weekly, and monthly time steps. Muskingum-Cunge hydrologic routing is
implemented in the model.

ModSim can also be used with geographic information systems (ArcGIS) (1) to generate input
data for the model based on spatial databases, (2) to provide an interface for the user to modify
input parameters, and (3) to display the results of the model in a way that decision makers can
view the results in an easy to understand format (Gibbens and Goodman, 2000)

ModSim has been extended to treat water quality issues in stream-aquifer systems through an
interactive connection to the EPA QUAL2E model for surface water quality routing, along with
a groundwater quality model for predicting salinity loading in irrigation return flows (Dai and
Labadie, 2001).

ModSim is well documented in both user manuals and source code comments. Model data
requirements and input formatting are presented along with sample test applications useful in
understanding model setup and operation. Currently, ModSim is being upgraded to use the
“.NET Framework” with all interface functions handled in Visual Basic and C#. This will
greatly enhance the ability of the model to interact with relational databases and all variables in
the model will be available for reading or writing to a database.

ModSim is in the public domain, and executable versions of the model are available free of
charge for use by private, governmental, and non-governmental users. Generally, the source
code for the model is not available. However, some government agencies have negotiated
agreements with the developer in which the source code is made available to the agency and the
agency is allowed to change or modify the source code as necessary for agency-related projects.

Current users of the ModSim include the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the City of Ft. Collins,
Colorado, the City of Greely, Colorado, the City of Colorado Springs, Colorado and the Imperial
Irrigation District in California. Many additional applications of ModSim exist.

OASIS (Hydrologics, 2001; Randall et al, 1997) - Operational Analysis and Simulation of
Integrated Systems (OASIS) developed by Hydrologics, Inc. is a general purpose water
simulation model. Simulation is accomplished by solving a linear optimization model subject to
a set of goals and constraints for every time step within a planning period. OASIS uses an
object-oriented graphical user interface to set up a model, similar to ModSim. A river basin is
defined as a network of nodes and arcs using an object-oriented graphical user interface. Oasis
uses Microsoft Access for static data storage, and HEC-DSS for time series data. The
Operational Control Language (OCL) within the OASIS model allows the user to create rules
that are used in the optimization and allows the exchange of data between OASIS and external
modules while OASIS is running. OASIS does not handle groundwater or water quality, but

24
external modules can be integrated into OASIS. Oasis does not have any link to GIS software or
databases.

OASIS has been used to model parts of the South Florida Water Management District, the
Delaware River (Delaware River Basin Commission), the Roanoke River (U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, The Nature Conservancy), the Kansas River (Kansas Water Office), the Rio
Grande (University of Texas at Austin), the South Fork of the American River in California, and
for long term planning in the Alameda Water District in California.

RiverWare (Carron et al., 2000; Zagona et al., 2001; Boroughs and Zagona, 2002; CADWES,
2004) – The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the United States Bureau of Reclamation
(USBR) and the University of Colorado’s Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and
Environmental Systems (CADWES) collaborated to create a general purpose river basin
modeling tool - RiverWare. RiverWare is a reservoir and river system operation and planning
model. The software system is comprised of an object-oriented set of modeling algorithms,
numerical solvers and language components.

Site specific models can be created in RiverWare using a graphical user interface (GUI) by
selecting reservoir, reach confluence and other objects. Data for each object is either imported
from files or input by the user. RiverWare is capable of modeling short-term (hourly to daily)
operations and scheduling, mid-term (weekly) operations and planning, and long-term (monthly)
policy and planning. Three different solution methods are available in the model: simulation (the
model solves a fully specified problem); rule-based simulation (the model is driven by rules
entered by the user into a rule processor); and optimization (the model uses Linear Goal-
Programming Optimization).

Operating policies are created using a constraint editor or a rule-based editor depending on the
solution method used. The user constructs an operating policy for a river network and supplies it
to the model as “data” (i.e., the policies are visible, capable of being explained to stakeholders;
and able to be modified for policy analysis). Rules are prioritized and provide additional
information to the simulator based on the state of the system at any time. RiverWare has the
capability of modeling multipurpose reservoir uses consumptive use for water users, and simple
groundwater and surface water return flows.

Reservoir routing (level pool and wedge storage methods) and river reach routing (Muskingum-
Cunge method) are options in RiverWare. Water quality parameters including temperature, total
dissolved solids and dissolved oxygen can be modeled in reservoirs and reaches. Reservoirs can
be modeled as simple, well-mixed or as a two layer model. Additionally, water quality routing
methods are available with or without dispersion.

RiverWare does not have a connection to any GIS software; however, a hydrologic database
(HDB) may be available (Frevert, et al., 2003; and Davidson et al, 2002). HDB is a relational
database used by the USBR and developed by CADWES to be used in conjunction with
RiverWare. HDB is an Oracle-based SQL database and includes streamflow, reservoir
operations, snowpack, and weather data.

25
RiverWare is currently being used by the Tennessee Valley Authority for daily scheduling of
more than 40 reservoirs and hydroplants. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation uses RiverWare’s
rule-based simulation models on the Colorado River for policy negotiations, to estimate salinity
and set monthly target operations for the entire river basin. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey have applied RiverWare’s rule-
based simulation and water accounting to the Upper Rio Grande to track native water and
diversions.

RiverWare runs on Sun Solaris (Unix) workstations or Windows based PCs. First year license
fees for are $6,500 / $11,500 (Single Node/Floating License) and the annual renewal fee is
$2,500 / $5,000.

URGWOM – RiverWare was used to create the Upper Rio Grande Water Operations Model
(URGWOM) developed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the International Boundary and Water
Commission (U.S. Section), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE, 2004b). This tool
is used to support studies related to water accounting and annual operating plans for the Rio
Grande from the Colorado/New Mexico border to El Paso, Texas. The model is capable of
simulating water storage and delivery operations and for flood control modeling. URGWOM is
a basic "backbone" water operations DSS meant to replace the current, more cumbersome,
methods that are used to plan, analyze, and evaluate river and reservoir management options.

URGWOM uses HEC-DSS as the primary database. The primary data required for the model
include:
• Agriculture - crop deep percolation, canal seep, crop acreage, and estimated actual
evapotranspiration rate by reach by crop;
• Diversions - flow in diversion canals, associated ditches, and drains;
• Evapotranspiration - includes crop acreage and consumptive use by reach by crop;
• Local Inflow - estimated ungaged side inflows to the Rio Grande;
• Reservoirs - includes numerous reservoir records such as pool elevation, temperature, and
sedimentation;
• River Losses - computed loss (gross leakage) from the Rio Grande;
• Stage - elevation of water surface;
• San Juan-Chama Accounts - includes San Juan-Chama Contractor accounting data;
• Streams - flow in the Rio Grande and its tributaries; and
• Wastewater - wastewater treatment plant discharge.

URGWOM is used by stakeholders to examine efficient water management alternatives.

Historically, the water of the Rio Grande has been used primarily for crop irrigation. However,
rapid population growth in the Basin and urbanization in some areas has resulted in increasing
and diversifying demands on the hydrologic system. Water management decisions are becoming
increasingly complex and difficult due to the broad range of interests and issues that must now
be considered. A greater variety of official entities and interest groups are asserting influence
over water management decisions than ever before. As water supply limits are approached,
higher levels of precision and reliability in water accounting and forecasting are required.

26
CRSS - The Colorado River Simulation System (CRSS) model (Schuster, 1987) was created in
the early 1980s to model the Colorado River Basin in order to schedule, forecast and plan
reservoir operations. Since CRSS was created to model the Colorado River Basin, many of the
characteristics of the basin were hard-coded into the model, including the topography of the
basin itself, the methods for calculating evaporation, bank storage and other reservoir-specific
information, and the policies by which water is allocated (Wehrend, 2002). As new information
about the basin and the operation policies and technology became available, CRSS had to be
updated and RiverWare was chosen for this task.

Wheeler et al. (2002) report on the use of the CRSS-RiverWare system’s use in five case studies:

• Interim Surplus Guidelines Study – a study of alternatives to gradually decrease

California’s dependency on water use beyond its apportionment over the next 15 years;
• Secretarial Implementation Agreement Study – the Interim Surplus Guidelines are
contingent on certain stipulations for California, primarily transfer of water from
agricultural to municipal use; this study analyzed the effects of water transfers and
potential inadvertent overrun withdrawals;
• Multi-Species Conservation Program Study – analysis of the potential effects of other
future water transfers from agricultural uses to municipal and industrial uses;
• The restoration of the Colorado River Delta – comparing alternative plans for restoring a
formerly rich riparian habitat; and
• The operation of Flaming Gorge Dam – comparing policies that attempt to mimic natural
flow patterns and meet minimum flow recommendations and consumptive use demands.

Wheeler et al. (2002) note that modeling alternative policies on the Colorado River provides a
method for reaching compromise on the operation of river basins. The cited examples indicate
more accessible modeling tools make it possible for a wider range of participation in exploring
policy analysis and creating new alternatives.

WaterWare (Fedra, 2002; Jamison and Fedra, 1996) - WaterWare is a decision support system
based on linked simulation models that utilize data from an embedded GIS, monitoring data
including real-time data acquisition, and an expert system. The system uses a multimedia user
interface with Internet access, a hybrid GIS with hierarchical map layers, object databases, time
series analysis, reporting functions, an embedded expert system for estimation, classification and
impact assessment tasks, and a hypermedia help- and explain system. The system integrates the
inputs and outputs for a rainfall-runoff model, an irrigation water demand estimation model, a
water resources allocation model, a water quality model, and groundwater flows and pollution
model.

3.3 Water Quality Decision Support Systems

BASINS (USEPA, 2004) - Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources
(BASINS) is a DSS that brings together large amounts of environmental data and modeling
capabilities in a single package with a GIS serving as the integrative platform. BASINS has
three objectives: to facilitate the examination of environmental information; to support analysis

27
of environmental systems; and to provide a framework for examining management alternatives
(US EPA, 1998). The system runs on PCs in the Windows environment and allows users to
assess water quality at selected stream sites or throughout an entire watershed. It integrates
environmental data, analytical tools, and modeling programs to support development of cost-
effective approaches to environmental protection. BASINS is comprised of a suite of
components for performing watershed and water quality analysis, including:

• Environmental and GIS databases (mainly U.S. based, but there are several applications
in Europe);
• Assessment tools for evaluating water quality and point source loadings;
• Utilities, including data import and management of water quality observation data;
• Watershed delineation tools;
• Utilities for classifying digital elevation models (DEM), landuse, soils, and water quality
data;
• In-stream water quality and eutrophication model (QUAL2E ver. 3.2);
• Simplified GIS-based nonpoint source annual loading model (PLOAD);
• Watershed loading and transport models:
o HSPF, a watershed scale model for estimating instream concentrations resulting
from loadings from point and nonpoint sources. WinHSPF is included which is
an interface to the Hydrological Simulation Program Fortran (HSPF), version 12
and
o SWAT, a physically based, watershed-scale model for predicting the impacts of
land management practices on water, sediment and agricultural chemical yields in
large complex watersheds with varying soils, land uses and management
conditions over long periods of time.
• Model results postprocessor (GenScn) for scenario generation to visualize, analyze, and
compare results from HSPF and SWAT

BASINS’ databases and assessment tools are directly integrated within an ArcView GIS
environment (EPA will release a version of BASINS for the ArcGIS platform sometime in
2004).

Modulus (Engelen, G., et al., 2000; Oxley, et al., 2002; Oxley, et al., 2004) - The European
Commission (EC) has, through its successive ‘Framework’ programs, funded the MODULUS
Project to integrate models developed in other EU projects to produce an environmental DSS.
Modulus integrates several models through a GUI, including: climate and weather, hillslope
hydrology, plant growth, natural vegetation, groundwater, surface water, crop choice, irrigation,
and land-use models. Modulus is composed of a number of components (ActiveX1 COM
compliant components) each corresponding to one of the models. The components can be easily
exchanged because the interface of each ActiveX component is standardized. The integration of
existing models is achieved without having to rewrite existing models by using a “wrapping”

1
“activeX” - A set of technologies that enables software components to interact with one another in a networked
environment, regardless of the language in which the components were created. ActiveX is built on Microsoft's
Component Object Model (COM - a software architecture that allows applications to be built from binary software
components.).

28
technique2 which transforms models from their native code into ActiveX components. Standard
interface definitions are used to integrate each component into the DSS in the Windows
environment. Modulus does not seem to be generally available for use; however, the
development of this DSS serves as a good model for building other DSSs.

4. Conclusions and Recommendations on Decision

Support System Creation

4.1 Lessons Learned

4.1.1 Definition of a DSS – As noted above, the generally accepted definition of a DSS is a
combination of a reasonably easy to use system that integrates an interactive user interface, a
database, and model(s) for the intended decision support purpose(s). Most of the reviewed
systems do not meet fully the requirements of a DSS. The reviewed water management DSSs
have been developed according to two general approaches:

• Stand-alone approach – where a DSS is created from scratch as a stand-alone system with
a unified input data set and a core of modeling tools that tightly couple to each other, e.g.,
Aquatool, Mike-Basin, and ModSim; and
• Framework approach – where a DSS is created by taking a series of existing models and
creating an interface that allows a user to execute the modeling procedures in a sequence,
passing outputs of one model to another as input in a user-transparent manner, e.g.,
CWMS, and Waterware.

The DSSs and models reviewed in this report are not an exhaustive list of all the available
systems and components, but they are representative of the mainstream of available products.
The technologies and methods for developing and deploying water management DSSs have
become mature over the past few years. However, creating and deploying a DSS for particular,
site specific applications requires careful planning and significant computer and programmer
experience.

4.1.2 Graphical User Interfaces - Graphical, user friendly operating systems and
software have become the norm and this is seen in the fact that all of the reviewed systems have
graphical, interactive interfaces integrated with models. This trend has enabled decision makers
to take a more active role in using these systems in water management. It has brought more
focus on the formulation of support systems that are responsive to the needs of decision makers,
rather than modelers and developers.

4.1.3 Modeling Multiple Areas of Water Management - In spite of recent rapid

advances in computer technology and the proliferation of software for decision support, there are
2
“wrapper” – an enclosure used to wrap a legacy application to make the legacy application available in a new
computer environment.

29
few DSSs available that can help to solve problems covering more than one or two areas of water
management. That is, there are systems that are good for flood prediction and management, e.g.,
CWMS, and others that are good for water allocation to competing uses, e.g., ModSim,
RiverWare, and Mike-Basin, but there aren’t any that can cover the broad spectrum of water
management from flood protection to groundwater management and everything in between.

That there are no DSSs that can handle a wide variety of water management problems is not
surprising, given the plethora of physical, chemical and biological processes that need to be
modeled, the disparate temporal and spatial scales of these problems, and the different data
needs. Flooding problems often need models that can handle time steps on the order of tens of
minutes, whereas, water allocation models use time steps of one month. Groundwater models
often use time steps of one month, but the data needed for describing three-dimensional
subsurface formations is very different from that required to describe a tree-like river network.

One of the difficulties encountered in modeling water management systems is the incorporation
of realistic decision rules or policies. This has been especially difficult in applying some
reservoir simulation models, such as HEC-RESSIM and WEAP, to situations which do not
follow the standard decision rules programmed in the model. Most of the reviewed models have
some ability to incorporate user designed water management policies and, recently, several (e.g.,
ModSim, RiverWare, and Oasis) have incorporated rule processing languages. Many of the
models for water allocation have some ability to optimize water allocation given management
priorities, however, only a couple of them are truly “optimization” models, e.g., ModSim,
RiverWare, and EPIC.

4.1.4 Relational Databases and GIS - Quick access to and processing of large, spatially
distributed databases over high-speed, readily accessible networks now offers a tremendous
improvement in the way DSSs can be developed and the effectiveness with which they may be
used. Few of the DSSs and models reviewed make use of modern, relational database software
or techniques. The lack of database usage is a major weakness in most of these models, since the
majority of water management data are being distributed in this form today, e.g., South Florida
Water Management District, National Water Commission of Mexico, Romanian Waters, have
major projects underway to convert all data storage and access over to database systems.

GIS is becoming a standard tool for support of water management modeling, especially in
hydrologic applications such as flood management. Interfaces, such as ARCHydro, that allow
GIS to connect easily to spatially referenced relational databases (geodatabases) are becoming an
important tool in water management. Several of the reviewed models have good access to the
ArcView GIS system (e.g., Mike-Basin, RiverSpill, and Basins), and a few others have a map
image display capability. By and large, all of the systems lack serious interfaces to GIS software
or geodatabases and those that do, need to update their systems to keep current with the new GIS
software, e.g., ArcGIS-9.

4.1.5 Legacy Code – By and large, the reviewed model codes are old and have not been
rewritten in modern, object-oriented programming languages. This is because many of the
existing systems are “legacy” codes, originally developed in the 1970s, that have been
maintained and upgraded incrementally over the years, usually in the original language.

30
Typically in these models, input is read from ASCII text files that tend to preserve the formatting
of Hollerith punch cards, and output is not much better, in that it is to ASCII text files that must
then be processed, in most cases, by a spreadsheet or other third-party software. In the future it
will become increasingly difficult to prepare input files from relational databases to use as input
to these models. The models need to be updated to access the databases directly. It is worth
noting that some models have their own database management systems, e.g., HEC-DSS, and
RiverWare, and others have the ability to access databases, e.g., ModSim, but these seem to be
the exception.

4.2 Design Aspects of a DSS.

4.2.1 Design Process - There are several factors that must be considered in designing a
water management DSS. These are all related to the basic criteria used to define a DSS:

• Interactive user interface;

• Database; and
• Model(s)

As mentioned in the previous section, these elements are commonly applied to water
management in various combinations, but they are rarely all integrated into a single, seamless
system for decision support. Several reasons for this have been outlined, including the use of
legacy code which hampers the integration of relational databases into modeling. This leads to
questions about what can be done in the design of a DSS to avoid the pitfalls identified of
existing systems. Davidson et al. (2002) note four main phases in the design of water
management DSSs:

1. Needs assessment to identify the functional requirements of the system;

2. Design of the system;
3. Construction of the system; and
4. Maintenance and support of the system including reevaluation of needs and design.

The first phase is critical to the success of any DSS. The needs for and uses of the system have
to be assessed and defined. The specific aspects of water management to be addressed by the
DSS must be defined, i.e., a flood management DSS can not be expected to function as a water
allocation DSS and vice versa. The users of the system need to be clearly identified and their
needs for system functions assessed. Lam et al. (2004) note that DSSs can be developed for
different types of users: technical users who need an interface that understands and
communicates with databases and models from different programming platforms and languages,
and public users who are served decision support through web-based interfaces and simplified
systems.

The design of the system should follow modern and up-to-date software engineering principles,
including programming languages, database systems, and interface design. The use of legacy
code should be minimized and where it is used, that use should be justified. The development
process can be broken down into a series of sequential steps (Davidson et al. 2002):

31
 • Requirements definition;
• Preliminary design;
• Detailed design;
• Implementation;
• Unit testing;
• Integration testing;
• System testing;
• System rollout; and
• Maintenance.

4.2.2 Specific Aspects of Systems – there are several specific programming aspects that
should be taken into account when developing a water management DSS. These include:

• The interface to be used in the DSS;

• The method of connecting DSS components together into an integrated system;
• The data model to be used to store all of the necessary information to represent the water
management problem;
• The algorithms to be used in solving for flow in a surface or ground water system; and
• Any special programming and processing languages and tools necessary to represent
stakeholder priorities in the DSS.

User Interface – User interfaces are easily constructed today using a variety of software
development tools, including Borland Builder and MS Visual Studio. These tools have made it
extremely easy to design and develop interfaces to control the functioning of almost any
application or combination of applications that must work together in a software package.

Integrating DSS components - Using available software development environments, DSS

components, i.e., interfaces, databases, and models, can be integrated to work together in a
seamless, user interactive environment. The basis for this integrability is the use of COM
compliant components3 for each model in the DSS. The components can be easily integrated
because the interface of each component is standardized. The integration of existing models can
be achieved without having to rewrite existing models by using a “wrapping” technique4 which
develops the standard interface for the model. Once the standard interface has been created for a
model, it can be integrated into the DSS in the Windows environment.

Network flow solvers – One of the most important developments in river basin simulation
models is the use of linear optimization algorithms to solve simultaneous equations in order to
mimic operating policies. Such sets of procedures can be difficult to generate for complex
systems, and very different and new rule sets may be needed if structural or significant policy

3
“COM” - Microsoft's Component Object Model, a software architecture that allows applications to be built from
binary software components and enables software components to interact with one another in a networked
environment, regardless of the language in which the components were created.
4
“wrapper” – an enclosure used to wrap a legacy application to make the legacy application available in a new
computer environment.

32
changes are to be investigated. In order to avoid this, river basin models can be formulated as
minimum cost capacitated network flow problems solved using network flow solvers, such as the
out-of-kilter algorithm (used in HEC-ResSIM) or the more efficient Lagrangian approach (used
in ModSim) of Bertsekas (1994). In a network flow model, the system is represented as a
collection of nodes (e.g., reservoirs, diversions, stream tributary confluences, and other system
features) and arcs. Nodes are connected by arcs representing the flow (discharge rate). The
network flow solver computes the values of the flows in each arc so as to minimize the weighted
sum of flows, subject to constraints on mass balance at each node and upper and lower flow
bounds. The weights are penalties expressing relative priorities in user defined operating rules.
The user must provide lower and upper bounds on diversions, instream flows, and reservoir
storage levels and assign relative priorities for meeting each flow requirement and for
maintaining target reservoir storage levels. The network solver computes the flows and storage
changes in a particular time interval (say, a day or a month), and then uses the solution as the
starting point for calculations in the next time interval.

A distinguishing feature of these hybrid simulation/optimization models is the use of

optimization on a period by period basis (not fully dynamic over the entire planning horizon, as
in the EPIC system) to “simulate” the allocation of water under various prioritization schemes,
such as water rights, without perfect foreknowledge of future hydrology and other uncertain
information. Systems employing optimization in this manner include: ARSP, ModSim, OASIS,
Ribasim, RiverWare, WEAP and CALSIM II. ModSim is further distinguished by the use of
iterative structures using an imbedded scripting language which allows including non-network
“side constraints” in the optimization.

Rule processing languages - Several of the reviewed DSSs make use of special programming
languages for further defining system operating rules. These languages include Tcl (Ousterhout,
1994), Perl (Schwartz and Christiansen, 1997), Python (van Rossum, 1995), Java (Arnold, et al.,
2000) and CLIPS (NASA, 1994). Tcl (used in RiverWare) is an interpreted scripting language
that can be easily embedded into existing C applications to perform any task that could be
performed by a compiled C function and they can be changed without rebuilding the C program.
Perl (used in ModSim) is a very fast interpreted scripting language that can be used to quickly
develop small to moderate sized programs and extended to include user-defined functions.

4.2.3 Sustainability and Institutional Capacity - The issue of sustainability needs to

be addressed in looking at possible DSSs or models to be deployed in a large-scale manner such
as a National Water Agency. If a commercial software product is purchased today, what
assurance does the purchaser have that the company will still be in business and supporting the
software in the future? Similarly, if public domain software is obtained, what is the likelihood
that the developers will maintain interest in supporting the software? If the company migrates
their software to a different system, will the customer be informed and offered upgrades at
reasonable cost? If a system is implemented in a UNIX or LINUX operating system, but the
company decides later to switch to the more common Windows environment, will the customers
be offered the new product and at what cost? It is worth noting that may of the commercially
available models described above are essentially “dressed-up” versions of public-domain
software that is maintained by government agencies. Developers of the original public-domain
codes may decide not to fund the support and maintenance of these models in the future. There

33
is a history of government developers providing adequate notice of these types of changes (i.e.,
obsoleting old codes).

A major problem arises when agencies receive software for free from commercial developers or
purchase a single license and then do not purchase adequate licenses to achieve the desired
deployment of the software and do not purchase annual license renewal, support and upgrades.
This leaves the agency in the position of deploying software without any possibility of support or
upgrade in the future.

Agencies need to have adequate human resource capacity to understand the physical, chemical
and biological aspects needed to model water management problems. In addition, capacity is
required to maintain, modify and develop new database and modeling software and systems as to
achieve the goals of the agency.

In addition, agencies need to prepare and implement adequate training for staff and stakeholders
to understand and properly use installed software. This needs to be part of the design and
implementation of a water management DSS. As an example, the CALSIM II model was
developed almost entirely as an internal California Department of Water Resources and US
Bureau of Reclamation effort with little input from stakeholders until after model development
was complete. The model was released to a user community with little provision made for
training, support or documentation. This has turned out to be a major problem for the developers
who have had to go back and design a support and training mechanism for the user community
(DWR, 2004; Loucks et al., 2003). Agencies planning to deploy modeling tools and systems
need to give these issues considerable thought and plan for training and support.

4.3 What Should a Water Management DSS Look Like?

There are several ways that one may approach the problem of developing a DSS for water
management:

• One general DSS solving all aspects for water management in a region; or
• A package of dedicated DSSs for different water management problems (loosely)
integrated in a package or packages.

Unless one wants to start from scratch and program all elements of a DSS, then the second
approach may be preferable.

The DSS may contain the some or all of the following parts:

1. Emergency Water Management –

a. Data collection - Collection of precipitation, streamflow and infrastructure data by
automated sensor systems and transmission and entry into a central database,
b. Runoff modeling - Streamflow forecast models, such as the National Weather
Service RFS model or the Princeton University TOPLATS model, to predict
runoff resulting from single storm events or longer term conditions,

34
 c. Flood management – catchment modeling of precipitation and runoff generation
coupled with reservoir operation for flood control and flood damage assessment
using the US Army Corps of Engineers CWMS system with appropriate warnings
issued. In addition, the FLDWAV package could be used to predict the
consequences of infrastructure failure.
d. Accidental Surface Water Spill Management – Modeling of advective transport of
chemical constituents from a spill site to downstream vulnerable or critical sites
with appropriate warnings issued, using a system similar to the USEPA Riverspill
model.

2. Surface water allocation – using monthly aggregated streamflow data from the database
described above. This could be accomplished with the Mike-Basin, or ModSim models.

3. Surface water quality management – using daily streamflow data from the database
described above. This could be accomplished with the QUAL2e, HSPF, WASP models
for rivers, and the CE-QUAL-W2 or DYRESM models for lakes and reservoirs.

4. Groundwater allocation – using the USGS MODFLOW model for simulation of

groundwater flow along with MODOFC for management.

5. Groundwater quality management – using the MT3D model for simulation of chemical
constituents in groundwater.

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Appendces
A. Models Used in Decision Support Systems
A.1 Hydrologic Models - Event-based

Hydrologic models simulate the hydrologic processes by which precipitation is converted to

streamflow. These models are often used to provide input hydrographs to river hydraulics
models and river management models. A portion of precipitation may be lost from through
interception, depression storage, infiltration, evaporation, and transpiration (Chow et al., 1988).
The remaining precipitation flows overland and through the soil, collects as flow in swales and
small channels, and eventually becomes runoff to streams. Land use, drainage improvements,
storage facilities, and other development activities significantly affect the processes by which
precipitation is converted to streamflow. Snowfall and snowmelt as well as rainfall are
important in many areas.

Hydrologic models are categorized generally as event or continuous models. Event models
simulate individual storm events and neglect soil infiltration and other abstractions. Continuous
models simulate long periods of time which include multiple precipitation events separated by
significant dry periods with no precipitation. Modeling water quality in a watershed requires the
use of a continuous watershed model.

Simulating the runoff response of single rainfall events is based on the unit hydrograph or
kinematic wave approaches and involves the following tasks for each individual subwatershed of
the basin of interest (Wurbs, 1994):

(1) A precipitation depth is specified for each time interval;

(2) The runoff volume, resulting from the precipitation in each time interval, is computed;
(3) Either a unit hydrograph or kinematic routing is applied to convert the incremental runoff
to a runoff hydrograph at the subwatershed outlet
(4) Hydrologic routing hydrographs through stream reaches and reservoirs. Channel routing
methods include: Muskingum, Muskingum-Cunge, modified Puls, working R and D,
average lag, and kinematic wave.

HEC-HMS (HEC, 2001) - The USACE Hydrologic Engineering Center – Hydrologic Modeling
System (HEC-HMS) is an event based precipitation-runoff model. In addition to the basic
watershed modeling capabilities, HMS includes several other optional features involving:
partially automated parameter calibration, multiplan-multiflood analysis, dam safety analysis,
economic flood damage analysis, and flood control system optimization.

An HMS precipitation-runoff modeling application typically involves dividing a watershed into a

number of subwatersheds for analysis. HMS provides flexible options for developing and/or
inputting precipitation data, which may reflect snowfall and snowmelt as well as rainfall.
Precipitation volumes are converted to direct runoff volumes using one of the following optional
methods: Soil Conservation Service curve number method; initial and uniform loss rate;

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exponential loss rate function; Holtan loss rate function; or Green and Ampt relationship.
Runoff hydrographs are computed from the incremental runoff volumes using either the unit
hydrograph or kinematic routing options. A unit hydrograph may be input to HMS. Watershed
modeling also involves routing hydrographs through stream reaches and reservoirs. HMS uses
hydrologic storage routing for reservoirs. The following channel routing options are provided:
Muskingum, Muskingum-Cunge, modified Puls, working R and D, average lag, and kinematic
wave. HMS includes modeling capabilities such as snowmelt rather than just rainfall; flood
control economic analyses; and partially automating parameter calibration.

A.2 Hydrologic Models - Continuous

Continuous watershed simulation models allow simulation of streamflow over long periods of
time and maintain a continuous accounting of the water in storage in the watershed (Singh,
1992). Due to the longer time simulated, interception, depression storage, infiltration, subsurface
flow, baseflow, evaporation, and transpiration processes can be directly accounted for in the
models.

HSPF (Johanson et al. 1980, 1984) – A discussion of Hydrological Simulation Program –

Fortran (HSPF) can not really begin without mentioning the Stanford Watershed Model (SWM)
developed at Standard University in the early 1960s (Crawford and Linsley 1966). SWM and its
variations are composed of a set of water budget accounting procedures which incorporate
computational routines for the various hydrologic processes such as interception, infiltration,
evapotranspiration, overland flow, channel routing, and so forth. Time series input data include
precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and, if snowmelt is modeled, additional
meteorological data. In the model, precipitation is stored in the snowpack and in three soil-
moisture zones (upper, lower, groundwater). The upper and lower storage zones account for
overland flow, infiltration, interflow, and inflow to groundwater storage. Groundwater storage
supplies baseflow to stream channels. Evaporation and transpiration may occur from any of the
three storage zones. The runoff from overland flow, interflow, and base flow enters the channel
system and is routed downstream. Model output includes continuous outflow hydrographs.

Derivatives of the Stanford Watershed Model include (Viessman et al. 1989; Ponce 1989) the
Kentucky Watershed Model, Texas Watershed Model, Ohio Watershed Model, U.S. Department
of Agriculture Hydrograph Laboratory (USDAHL) Model, Sacramento Model, National Weather
Service River Forecast System (NWS-RFS), Hydrocomp Simulation Program, and Hydrological
Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF).

HSPF, the current successor model to SWM, provides relatively sophisticated capabilities for
continuous simulation of a broad range of hydrologic and water quality processes. HSPF is “a
comprehensive package for simulation of watershed hydrological and associated water quality
processes on pervious and impervious land surface, in the soil profile, and in streams and well-
mixed impoundments” (Donigian et al., 1984). HSPF consists of a set of modules arranged in a
hierarchical framework, built around a time series management system. The various simulation
and utility modules can be invoked individually or in various combinations. The structured
design of the model facilitates users adding their own modules, if they so desire. HSPF

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simulates watershed hydrology and water quality for both conventional and toxic organic
pollutants. Input data include time histories of rainfall, temperature, and solar radiation; and
information regarding land-surface characteristics, such as land-use patterns and soil properties,
and land-management practices. The model predicts flow rates, sediment loads, and nutrient and
pesticide concentrations. HSPF allows integrated simulation of land and soil contaminant runoff
processes with instream hydraulic and sediment-chemical interactions. HSPF simulates three
sediment types (sand, silt, and clay) in addition to a single organic chemical and transformation
products of that chemical. The transfer and reaction processes modeled are hydrolysis,
oxidation, photolysis, biodegradation, volatilization, and sorption. Sorption is modeled as a first-
order kinetic process in which the user must specify a desorption rate and an equilibrium
partition coefficient for each of the three solid types. Benthic exchange is modeled as
sorption/desorption and desorption/scour with surficial benthic sediments.

There are three main modules in HSPF (PERLND, IMPLND, and RECHRES) that simulate
hydrological and chemical processes in pervious landcover, in impervious landcover, and in
reaches. PERLND treats the land surface and the underlying soil profile as a series of connected
storage reservoirs, each of which either receives inputs, or spills output, or both. IMPLND is
much simpler than the PERLND due to the absence of the soil profile, since no water is
considered to move beyond the land surface. RESCRES routes both water and chemicals
entering a reach from the land segment to the downstream point. HSPF simulates sediment
transport processes at the hill slope and reach levels. The model assumes that the transported
sediment material consists of sand, silt, and clay. Several options are available for the model
user to estimate the sediment load from the land to the reach and the final load at the outlet.
Various chemical constituents can be modeled in HSPF. It is assumed in the model that
constituents undergo various chemical processes in the pervious land segment (this is not the
case for the impervious land). The model considers adsorption and desorption of constituents to
material in the soil and sediments, mineralization/immobilization processes, and plant uptake.
Constituents removed from the land either in dissolved form or associated with sediment are
delivered with runoff to the main river channel where chemical stream processes occur until the
outlet is reached.

PRMS (Leavesly et al., 1983) - The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Precipitation-Runoff
Modeling System (PRMS) performs computations on both a daily and smaller time-interval
storm scale using variable time steps (DeVries and Hromadka 1993). During a storm event, time
intervals as small as a minute may be used to compute runoff using kinematic flood routing for a
watershed represented by interconnected flow planes and channels. A daily interval is used
between storm events. Streamflow is computed as mean daily flow. In PRMS a watershed is
represented by a number of hydrologic response units (HRUs) each of which is assumed to have
homogeneous hydrologic characteristics. Hortoninan infiltration is modeled with the Green-
Ampt infiltration method. HRU parameters include surface slope, aspect, elevation, soil type,
vegetation type, and distribution of precipitation. PRMS performs water and energy balances for
each HRU, and the watershed response is the sum of all pertinent HRU responses. PRMS can be
used in combination with the USGS ANNIE data management program, and a modified version
of the National Weather Service (NWS) Extended Streamflow Prediction (ESP) model to
provide a comprehensive watershed modeling system.

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The Modular Modeling System (MMS), an outgrowth of the development of PRMS, is an
integrated system of computer software that is being developed to provide the research and
operational framework needed to support development, testing, and evaluation of physical
process algorithms and to facilitate integration of user-selected sets of algorithms into
operational environmental-process models (Leavesley et al., 1996; Leavesley et al., 2004). MMS
includes PRMS. A geographic information system (GIS) interface, the GIS Weasel, has been
developed to support MMS in model development, application, and analysis. The GIS Weasel
permits application of a variety of GIS tools to delineate, characterize, and parameterize the
topographic, hydrologic, and biologic features of a physical system for use in a variety of lumped
and distributed parameter modeling approaches. The integration of the GIS Weasel and MMS
provide a flexible framework in which to integrate and apply environmental models and
analytical tools. MMS currently runs under the UNIX operating system, but it is being rewritten
in Java to be available on multiple computer systems.

SHE (Abbot et al., 1986a, b) - The European Hydrologic System or Systeme Hydrologique
Europeen (SHE) was developed jointly by the Danish Hydraulic Institute, United Kingdom
Institute of Hydrology, and SOGREAH in France with financial support from the Commission of
European Communities (Abbott et al. 1986; DeVries and Hromadka 1993). SHE is a physically
based, distributed parameter watershed modeling system which incorporates the major
hydrologic processes including precipitation, snowmelt, canopy interception, evapotranspiration,
overland flow, saturated and unsaturated subsurface flow, and channel flow. Spatial variability
of the hydrologic processes is represented by a rectangular grid in the horizontal plane and
vertically by a series of horizontal planes at various depths. SHE may be applied in analyzing
irrigation schemes, land-use changes, water development projects, groundwater contamination,
erosion and sediment transport, and floods. The Systémè Hydrologique Européen (SHE) model
and its derivatives (e.g., MIKE SHE) are proprietary, with source code not available.

SWAT (Neitsch, 2002) – Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a continuous hydrologic
simulation of water, sediment and chemical movement created by Texas A&M University, for
the USDA Agricultural Research Service. SWAT is a river basin scale model developed to
quantify the impact of land management practices in large, complex watersheds. Given values
for basic climatic variables, the model calculates canopy storage, infiltration (using SCS Curve
number method), surface runoff, ponds, evapotranspiration, lateral subsurface flow, tributary
channels and return flow. The model also calculates land cover/plant growth, erosion, nutrients,
pesticides and management. Water management options in the model include water use
(domestic or agricultural) water transfer between reservoirs, reaches or sub-basins or exportation
from the basin. SWAT is coded in FORTRAN-90 and is transportable to a variety of platforms,
including PC compatibles.

SWAT is a continuous model working at the basin scale to look at the long term impacts of
management and timing of agricultural practices (Neitsch et al., 2001). The model was created
by merging SWRRB (Simulator for Water Resources in Rural Basins) (Williams et al., 1985),
and ROTO (Routing Outputs To the Outlet) (Arnold et al., 1995). The goal of developing the
SWRRB model was to predict the effects of management decisions on water and sediment yields
for ungauged rural basins throughout the United States (Arnold and Williams, 1987).

54
The hydrological phase in SWAT provides the required parameters for the chemical constituent
calculations in the watershed. The most important parameter is the runoff volume computed by
the modified SCS curve number method. Another significant flow parameter is the lateral
subsurface flow or interflow which represents a stream flow contribution originating below the
soil surface but above the zone of saturation. The model applies the kinematic storage method to
estimate this stream flow component. The model solves the water mass balance equation in
shallow aquifers to estimate base flow contribution. Sediment removal from the land surface is
calculated by the Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation (MUSLE).

A.3 River Hydraulics Models

River hydraulics models simulate flow conditions in natural and improved streams and rivers,
and associated floodplains, and in man-made channels. Required data include channel geometry
and roughness data and either steady-state or time-dependent inflow rates. Steady, varied flow
models compute flow depths as a function of location along the channel. Unsteady flow models
calculate discharges and flow depths as a function of time and location. These models are
typically used in combination with rainfall-runoff, water quality, and river basin management
models. Flow in rivers typically modeled as either one- or two-dimensional, steady (unchanging
with time) or unsteady and uniform (unchanging when traversing up or down stream) or
nonuniform or varied.

DYNHYD (Ambrose et al., 1993) – The DYNamic HYDraulics (DYNHYD) model is a link-
node hydrodynamic model simulating velocity, volume, and water depth under river flow
phenomena. The equations of conservation of mass and energy are solved by the method of
finite-differences to predict water velocities, flows, water heights, and volumes. The model is
driven by variable upstream flows and downstream heads and assumes that flow is
predominantly one-dimensional. Bed characteristics are parameterized using Manning’s n. Wind
that can either oppose or concur with flow can also be accounted for within the model.
DYNHYD is a one-dimensional model, simulating velocity in the direction of the channel, but is
applied to two-dimensional (vertically integrated) systems by approximating the system by a
network of nodes with interconnected one-dimensional channels. It is generally operated in
conjunction with a transport (i.e., water quality) model lacking a hydrodynamic capability, e.g.,
WASP. The model assumes a simple channel geometry, rectangular in cross section with cross
sectional area is proportional to depth. Thus this sort of model would not be appropriate for
applications to rivers with floodplain areas or gentle lateral side slopes. Generally, DYNHYD5
cannot be applied to stratified water bodies or water bodies without well-defined primary flow
directions. The more usual configuration for DYNHYD is a steady or slowly varying inflow
regime, for evaluation of critical-condition or normal-condition water quality. Since DYNHYD
is a time-advancing model, in principle it can handle dynamic events, such as flood hydrographs.
However, its limited accuracy would probably result in poor accuracy for a “fully dynamic
event” such as a flood event in a flashy stream (Ward and Benneman, 1999a). The software is
available in the public domain (executable and source code) from Scientific Software, at:
http://www.scientificsoftwaregroup.com/.

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FLDWAV (Fread and Lewis 1988) - The National Weather Service (NWS) Operational
Dynamic Wave Model (DWOPER), Dam-Break Flood Forecasting Model (DAMBRK), and
Flood Wave (FLDWAV) are dynamic routing models developed by the Hydrologic Research
Laboratory of the National Weather Service. DAMBRK is a specific purpose dam-breach model
that stemmed from the general purpose DWOPER. The NWS Flood Wave (FLDWAV) program
combines DWOPER and DAMBRK into a single model and provides additional hydraulic
simulation methods within a more user-friendly model structure (Fread and Lewis 1988).
FLDWAV, like DWOPER and DAMBRK, is based on an expanded form of the St. Venant
equations that includes the following hydraulic effects: lateral inflows and outflows; off-channel
storage; expansion and contraction losses; mixed subcritical and supercritical flow; nonuniform
velocity distribution across the flow section; flow path differences between the flood plain and a
sinuous main channel; and surface wind shear. The model can simulate dam breaches in one or
several dams located sequentially on the same stream. Other conditions that can be simulated
include: levee overtopping; interactions between channel and floodplain flow; and combined
free-surface and pressure flow. FLDWAV also has a calibration option for determining Manning
roughness coefficient values.

The NWS Dynamic Wave Operational Model (DWOPER) program is used routinely by the
National Weather Service River Forecast Centers and has also been widely applied outside of the
National Weather Service. DWOPER has wide applicability to rivers of varying physical
features, such as branching tributaries, irregular geometry, variable roughness parameters, lateral
inflows, flow diversions, off-channel storage, local head losses such as bridge contractions and
expansions, lock and dam operations, and wind effects. An automatic calibration feature is
provided for determining values for roughness coefficients. Data management features facilitate
use of the model in a day-to-day forecasting environment. The model is equally applicable for
simulating unsteady flows in planning and design studies.

The NWS Dam Break (DAMBRK) program has been extensively applied by various agencies
and consulting firms in conducting dam safety studies. DAMBRK simulates the failure of a dam,
computes the resultant outflow hydrograph, and simulates the movement of the flood wave
through the downstream river valley. An inflow hydrograph is routed through a reservoir
optionally using either hydrologic storage routing or dynamic routing. Two types of breaching
may be simulated. An overtopping failure is simulated as a rectangular, triangular, or trapezoidal
shaped opening that grows progressively downward from the dam crest with time. A piping
failure is simulated as a rectangular orifice that grows with time and is centered at any specified
elevation within the dam. The pool elevation at which breaching begins, time required for breach
formation, and geometric parameters of the breach must be specified by the user. The DWOPER
dynamic routing algorithm is used to route the outflow hydrograph through the downstream
valley. DAMBRK can simulate flows through multiple dams located in series on the same
stream.

DWOPER does not include the dam breach modeling capabilities of DAMBRK. DAMBRK is
limited to a single river without tributaries and thus does not provide the flexibility of DWOPER
in simulating branching tributary configurations.

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HEC-RAS (HEC, 2002) – The River Analysis Systems (RAS) is an accepted U.S. standard for
calculating river hydraulics. The model was originally developed in the 1960s and has evolved
through numerous modifications and expansions. Originally, RAS was intended for computing
water surface profiles for steady gradually varied flow in natural or man-made channels. The
computational procedure is based on the standard step method of solution. The computations
proceed by reach, with known values at one cross-section being used to compute the water
surface elevation, mean velocity, and other flow characteristics at the next crosssection. Both
subcritical and supercritical flow regimes can be modeled. The effects of obstructions to flow
such as bridges, culverts, weirs, and buildings located in the floodplain may be reflected in the
model.

RAS can be used for simulating one-dimensional steady or unsteady flow, sediment transport
and movable boundary open channel flow. The RAS system contains three components for: (1)
steady flow water surface profile computations; (2) unsteady flow computations; and (3)
movable boundary hydraulic computations. All three components use a common geometric data
representation, and common geometric and hydraulic computation routines. RAS is comprised of
a graphical user interface, separate computational engines, data storage/management
components, graphics, and reporting capabilities.

Although RAS is a stand-alone model, it is often used in combination with HMS. A typical
HMS/ RAS application involves predicting the water surface profiles which would result from
actual or hypothetical precipitation events. Precipitation associated with an actual storm, design
storm of specified exceedence frequency, or design storm such as the probable maximum storm,
is provided as input to the HMS model. HMS performs the rainfall-runoff and routing
computations required to develop hydrographs at pertinent locations in the stream system. Peak
discharges from the HMS hydrographs are provided as input to RAS, which computes the
corresponding water surface elevations at specified locations. RAS is also sometimes used to
develop discharge versus storage volume relationships for stream reaches which are used in
HMS for the modified Puls routing option.

A.4 Urban Hydraulics Models

(Mary-Jeanne Adler)

WSE (Braschi et all, 1991) - Braschi et al., (1991) treated the aspect of hydraulic flood modeling
in urban situations considering that hydraulic cells could be considered to have a certain
porosity. The considered porosity is the area not occupied by buildings in the cell. They also
considered that the water transfer from one cell node to another should be calculated along
preferential paths (essential roads). Following Braschi et al.’s ideas, the following modeling
concepts can be defined:

1. water storage – the flood volume stored by structures, particularly buildings, and
2. water transfer – the effect of structures on the flood wave propagation.

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The WSE model centers on the concepts of storage and transfer, one cannot neglect other
essential hydraulic modeling considerations which apply to flooding situations. A few of these
are:

- the correct estimation of the river head losses (typically done by calibrating Manning
coefficients) is absolutely necessary for the river flow capacity to be accurately
simulated;
- detailed topographic data are necessary if detailed results are to be considered. Many
studies have shown that the topographic description is more important than the Manning
values (Horrit and Bates, 2001); and
- hydraulic structures along the watercourse must be identified and the modeling of the
structure decided upon according to the model possibilities.

FldPln (Consuegra et al., 1999) – FldPln is a quasi-2D numerical model; it was developed at
HYDRAM laboratory of EPFL. It is a two dimensional hydraulic model taking into account the
effect of the obstacles on the floodplain considered as micro-topography. This model use large
computation units to allow a reasonable computation time. The micro-topography is taken into
account by the mesh generation procedure that aligns Thissen polygons along the micro-
topography and optimizes the size and position of the intermediate polygons (Consuegra et al.,
1999). With the discretization of the floodplain into cells respecting the break lines and the
preferential flow paths, 1D hydraulic equations can be used to calculate the discharge between
two cells due to the differences in their water elevations. Mesh generation, parameterization and
simulation setup is done within MapInfo GIS software. Output data is written directly to
MapInfo tables allowing easy flood hazard mapping. In this model, sometimes intercellular flow
width has to be adjusted according to the maximum building density of the two cells.

FAST2D (Wenka et al., 1991) – FAST2d followed by PREFAST (Valenta and Wenka, 1996)
including GIS facility are numerical models enable the simulation of free surface steady water
flow in domain with complex geometry. The free surface flow version of the model was
originally developed in Germany at the Institute for Hydrodynamics in Karlsruhe on the basis of
an existing pure 2D model for pressure flow (Rodi et al., 1989). Further development of the
model, aimed at the design and programming of a system of suitable pre- and post-processing
tools, has been realized by the engineering firm Hydroexpert Ltd. in Prague in cooperation with
the Bundesanstalt fur Wasserbau in Karlsruhe (Valenta and Wenka, 1996). This system
PREFAST, is oriented towards the use of personal computers and was programmed as an
application based on the ADS (AutoCAD development system) for AutoCAD graphical
software. The system inherits interactive user-friendly tools with a graphical interface for all
steps of the model design – grid generation and modification, creating, editing and exploiting the
digital terrain model, specifying obstacles, specifying the distribution of bottom roughness
coefficients, and also for a graphical evaluation of the numerical simulation results.

FASR2D is coherent in terms of river-floodplain and floodplain-structural interactions. The

velocities distribution is coherent with the buildings influence on flow direction. Another
advantage is that only the Manning parameters need to be estimated. The disadvantage is the
number of computation cells, which raise a big problem for time computation.

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A.5 Water Quality Models

CE-QUAL-W2 (Cole and Wells, 2003) - CE-QUAL-W2 is a 2D laterally averaged

hydrodynamic and water quality model, designed for application to watercourses with prominent
longitudinal variation that are deep enough for density stratification to be important. W2 models
longitudinal and vertical hydrodynamics and water quality in stratified and non-stratified
systems, multiple algae, epiphyton/periphyton, CBOD, and generic water quality groups, internal
dynamic pipe/culvert model, hydraulic structures (weirs, spillways) algorithms including
submerged and 2-way flow over submerged hydraulic structures, dynamic shading algorithm
based on topographic and vegetative cover. Basic eutrophication processes are modeled, such as,
temperature-nutrient-algae-dissolved oxygen-organic matter and sediment relationships. The
model has complex dissolved oxygen and nutrient budgets in the mass-balance part of the model,
including the ability to simulate algae blooms. The water quality algorithms incorporate 21
constituents in addition to temperature, including nutrient/ phytoplankton/ dissolved oxygen
(DO) interactions during anoxic conditions. Any combination of constituents can be simulated.
The effects of salinity or total dissolved solids/salinity on density and thus hydrodynamics are
included only if they are simulated in the water quality module. The water quality algorithm is
modular, allowing constituents to be easily added as additional subroutines if the user desires.
Despite the "user friendly" objective of the structured, commented code and the substantial users
manual, model set-up and execution are difficult (Ward and Benneman, 1999). The model has
seen 20 years of applications, including: TVA’s Douglas Reservoir; Taylorsville Lake in the
Upper Salt River Basin, Kentucky; Cheatham Lake on the Cumberland River below Nashville;
the proposed Isikli Reservoir of the Ankara Water Supply System, Turkey; Brownlee Reservoir
on the Snake River, Oregon; and Lake Waco in Texas. The model release includes executables,
source codes, and examples for the W2 V3.1 model, preprocessor and GUI
(http://www.cee.pdx.edu/w2/).

DYRESM (Antenucci and Imerito, 2003; Hipsey, et al., 2003) - Dynamic Reservoir Simulation
Model (DYRESM) is a one-dimensional hydrodynamics model for predicting the vertical
distribution of temperature, salinity and density in lakes and reservoirs. It is assumed that the
water bodies comply with the one-dimensional approximation in that the destabilising forcing
variables (wind, surface cooling, and plunging inflows) do not act over prolonged periods of
time. DYRESM has been used for simulation periods extending from weeks to decades. Thus the
model provides a means of predicting seasonal and inter-annual variation in lakes and reservoirs,
as well as sensitivity testing to long term changes in environmental factors or watershed
properties. DYRESM can be run either in isolation, for hydrodynamic studies, or coupled to
CAEDYM for investigations involving biological and chemical processes. DYRESM-
CAEDYM couples the one-dimensional hydrodynamics model DYRESM with the aquatic
ecological model CAEDYM. This allows for investigations into the relationships between
physical, biological and chemical variables in water bodies over seasonal and inter-annual
timescales.

The Computational Aquatic Ecosystem Dynamics Model (CAEDYM) is an aquatic ecological

model that may be run independently or coupled with hydrodynamic models DYRESM or
ELCOM. CAEDYM consists of a series of mathematical equations representing the major
biogeochemical processes influencing water quality. At its most basic, CAEDYM is a set of

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library subroutines that contain process descriptions for primary production, secondary
production, nutrient and metal cycling, and oxygen dynamics and the movement of sediment.

QUAL2E (Brown and Barnwell 1987) - The Enhanced Stream Water Quality Model (QUAL2E)
is a one-dimensional (longitudinal) model for simulating well-mixed streams and lakes (Brown
and Barnwell 1987). A watercourse is represented as a series of piece-wise segments or reaches
of steady, nonuniform flow. Flows are constant with time and uniform in each reach, but can
vary from reach to reach. QUAL2E allows simulation of point and nonpoint loadings,
withdrawals, branching tributaries, and in-stream hydraulic structures. The model allows
simulation of 15 water quality constituents including: dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen
demand, temperature, algae as chlorophyll, organic nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen,
organic phosphorus, inorganic phosphorus, coliforms, an arbitrary nonconservative constituent,
and three arbitrary conservative constituents. QUAL2E has optional features for analyzing the
effects on water quality, primarily dissolved oxygen and temperature, caused by diurnal
variations in meteorological data. Diurnal dissolved oxygen variations caused by algal growth
and respiration can also be modeled. QUAL2E also has an option for determining flow
augmentation required to meet any prespecified dissolved oxygen level. QUAL2E and its
variations stem from early models, including DOSAG model which solves the steady-state
oxygen sag problem for a multisegment river reach, and QUAL (TWDB 1971) which was
developed by expanding DOSAG. QUAL II (Roesner et al. 1973) was developed for the
Environmental Protection Agency by expanding and improving QUAL. Qual2E is in the public
domain and can be downloaded from: http://www.epa.gov/docs/QUAL2E_WINDOWS/#files
The Qual2E User’s manuals are available at:
http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/bsnsdocs.html#qual2e

REMM (Pomerleau, R. 1997) - The Riverine Emergency Management Model (REMM) is a

computer program and associated river, chemical, and geographic data files which computer the
time of travel, and optionally, the fate of a chemical spill, on a river system for various flow
conditions. Its primary purpose is to give emergency planners the capability to make a
reasonable determination of the travel time and the fate of chemical spills at locations
downstream from a given location. REMM incorporates chemical fate algorithms coupled to
travel time computations; fate processes for specific chemicals may be modeled; property and
fate data on over 100 chemicals are provided in an on-line chemical property database; properties
and fate of crude oil, gasoline, and fuel oil are addressed using specialized programming;
provides a "landmark descriptions" database to help the user identify locations of interest.
Databases include water intakes, bridge and pipeline crossings, populated areas, and other
sensitive or critical locations.

R-TOT (Waldon, 1999) - River Time of Travel (R-TOT) model has been developed to provide
travel time, time of passage, and peak contaminant concentration for spills. R-TOT includes
REMM as a component and extends its capabilities to provide real time management support to
users who do not have extensive training or hydrologic knowledge. Through a graphical user
interface R-TOT: implements spill modeling of travel times of the spill's leading edge, peak, and
trailing edges and projects spill duration; incorporates chemical fate algorithms coupled to travel
time computations; gives advice and warnings to users; and provides an on-line database with

60
property and fate data on over 100 chemicals. The model uses available hydrologic, hydraulic
(stage-velocity-discharge data), and geographic data.

Shen et al. (1995) developed a two-dimensional Lagrangian computer model for simulating
chemical or oil transport in rivers. The model considers the spilled chemical to be transported in
the river as a mixed layer over the depth of the flow and a bottom layer along the bed, with
continuous exchange between the two layers. The transport and fate processes include
advection/diffusion, sorption/desorption, settling, resuspension, diffusive exchange between
sediment/water interface, and can include volatization, photolysis, hydrolysis, and
biodegradation. The model has been applied to the upper St. Lawrence River, but this model
would be difficult to apply in an emergency when minimal data are available (Waldon, 1999).

WASP (Ambrose et al., 1993; Wool et al., 2003) - The Water Quality Analysis Simulation
Program (WASP), maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency, is a generalized
modeling framework for simulating aquatic systems including rivers, reservoirs, estuaries, and
coastal waters. WASP is designed to provide a flexible modeling system. WASP is a dynamic
compartment-modeling program for aquatic systems, including both the water column and the
underlying benthos. WASP allows the user to investigate 1, 2, and 3 dimensional systems, and a
variety of pollutant types. The time varying processes of advection, dispersion, point and diffuse
mass loading and boundary exchange are represented in the model. WASP also can be linked
with hydrodynamic and sediment transport models that can provide flows, depths velocities,
temperature, salinity and sediment fluxes. Water quality processes are modeled in special kinetic
subroutines that are either selected from a library or supplied by the user. EUTRO and TOXI are
sub-models which can be incorporated into WASP to analyze conventional pollution involving
dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, nutrients and eutrophication and toxic pollution
involving organic chemicals, metals, and sediment. WASP has no hydrodynamic capability and
must be linked with another model for this purpose; the most common linkage is to DYNHYD
which comes as part of the WASP software. Other hydrodynamic programs have also been
linked with WASP RIVMOD handles unsteady flow in one-dimensional rivers, while SED3D
handles unsteady, three-dimensional flow in lakes and estuaries.

WASP has been used to examine eutrophication of Tampa Bay, FL; phosphorus loading to Lake
Okeechobee, FL; eutrophication of the Neuse River Estuary, NC; eutrophication Coosa River
and Reservoirs, AL; PCB pollution of the Great Lakes, eutrophication of the Potomac Estuary,
kepone pollution of the James River Estuary, volatile organic pollution of the Delaware Estuary,
and heavy metal pollution of the Deep River, North Carolina, mercury in the Savannah River,
GA.

WASP6 comes with a data preprocessor that allows for the rapid development of input datasets,
either by cut and paste or queried from a database. A Post-Processor provides an efficient
method for reviewing model predictions and comparing them with field data for calibration.
WASP has been used for about twenty years and is a well-established water quality model,
supported by the USEPA. The current version is WASP6.2, released in November, 2003 to the
Windows operating system. WASP is written in FORTRAN and executables and source code
are in the public domain and can be downloaded from
(http://www.epa.gov/athens/wwqtsc/html/wasp.html).

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A.6 Reservoir Operation Models

Reservoir/river operation models are used for various purposes including: planning studies to
formulate and evaluate alterative plans for solving water management problems; and feasibility
studies of proposed construction projects as well reoperation of existing existing reservoir
systems. Reservoir/river system analysis models have traditionally been categorized as:
simulation, optimization, and combinations of simulation and optimization.

ARSP (Boss, 2004) - Acres Reservoir Simulation Package (ARSP) was developed by Acres
International Corporation and is currently being marketed and supported by BOSS International.
ARSP is a general multi-purpose, multi-reservoir simulation program which determines the
allocation of water through simulation according to user specified priorities. The model
considers natural inflows, precipitation, evaporation, and evapotranspiration as input data and
storage and release of water by reservoirs, physical discharge controls at reservoir outlets, water
flow in channels (e.g., streams, power channels, diversion channels, and irrigation channels),
consumptive demands (e.g., agricultural, industrial, and municipal), hydropower releases, and
losses in channels. Operating policies are defined by prioritizing water demands. Water resource
system allocation problems involving hydropower generation, flood control, water quality,
domestic and industrial water supply, irrigation demands, low-flow augmentation, environmental
requirements, fish and wildlife concerns, inter-basin diversion requirements, recreation interests,
and navigation requirements can be modeled. Monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, and user-definable
time-steps can be used. ARSP does not deal with water quality or groundwater issues. No links
to GIS or databases.

ARSP uses the Out-of-Kilter algorithm for determining flow in a network during a single time
period. ARSP does not determine optimal system performance for more than a single time
period and decisions depend on user defined penalties assigned associated with reservoir storage
levels through the use of “rule curves.” The rule curves are specified input data and are often
revised in successive simulation runs to determining the ‘optimal’ rules for the allocation of the
water resource for a simulation period.

ARSP runs on PCs in the Windows environment. It has been applied in a wide variety of
situations mainly involving reservoir design and operation, both in Canada and throughout the
world. ARSP fees are $2995 for single license and $995 for upgrades.

Lam et al. (2004) discuss the use of the RAISON Object System (ROS) software (Lam et al.,
1994) to link the ARPS reservoir operation model, the AGNPS nonpoint source pollution model,
a relational database (Acess), a spreadsheet (Excel), and a GIS (ArcGIS). The linkages between
all of these components are made via component object model (COM) technologies (Microsoft,
2004) which allows applications to be built from binary software components and supports
execution and communication between programs written in any language under the Windows
environment.

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Dynamic Simulation Software () – Some mention should be made in this review of dynamic
simulation software as it has been applied to water resources modeling. This includes the
software STELLA (High Performance Systems, 1992), POWERSIM (Powersim, 1966),
VENSIM (Ventana, 1996), and GOLDSIM (Goldsim, 2003). These are dynamic simulation
packages that stem from the system dynamics modeling method “Dynamo” invented by J.
Forrester at MIT in the 1960’s. The latest generation of these packages all use an object-oriented
programming environment. The models are constructed from stocks, flows, modifiers, and
connectors, and the software automatically creates difference equations form these based on user
input. These methods all include components for: (1) identification of stocks and flows in a
system; (2) graphically representing dynamic systems in "stock-and flow-diagrams”; and (3) a
computer language for simulating the constructed dynamic systems. Models can be created with
by connecting icons together in different ways into a model framework so that the structure of
the model is very transparent. STELLA has been applied to modeling water allocation from
reservoirs to water users on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin (Vigerstøl,
2003). STELLA has also been used extensively in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “Shared
Vision Planning” process (USACE, 2004).

HEC-ResSim (HEC, 2003) - Reservoir System Simulation created by the U.S. Army Corp of
Engineers – Hydrologic Engineering Center as the successor to HEC-5. Res-Sim has a graphical
user interface (GUI) and utilizes the HEC Data Storage System (HEC-DSS) for storage and
retrieval of input and output time-series data. ResSim is included in CWMS. ResSim is used to
simulate reservoir operations including all characteristics of a reservoir and channel routing
downstream. The model allows the user to define alternatives and run their simulations
simultaneously to compare results. Network elements include reservoirs, routing reaches,
diversions, and junctions. In ResSim, watersheds include streams, projects (ie reservoir, levees),
gage locations, impact areas, time-series locations and hydrologic and hydraulic data for that
specific area. Schematic elements in ResSim allow you to represent watershed, reservoir
network and simulation data visually in a geo-referenced context that interacts with associated
data. ResSim can access an Oracle Database to read and write time series data. Reservoirs are
complex elements that are made up of the pool, the dam, and one or more outlets. The criteria
for reservoir release decisions, an operation set, are drawn from a set of discrete zones and rules.
The zones divide the reservoir by elevation and contain a set of rules that describe the goals and
constraints that should be followed when the reservoir's pool elevation is within the zone.
Alternatives are developed to compare results using different model schematics (physical
properties), operation sets, inflows, and/or initial conditions. To assist in analyzing simulation
results, included within ResSim are default plots, a variety of summary reports, and HEC-
DSSVue. ResSim does not deal with water quality, environmental in-stream flows, recreation,
etc. The only aspect it does deal with is power generation as a characteristic of the reservoir.

WEAP (Raskin, et al., 1992; SEI, 2004) – The Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP)
developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Boston Center (Tellus Institute) is a water
balance software program that was designed to assist water management decision makers in
evaluating water policies and developing sustainable water resource management plans. WEAP
operates on basic principles of water balance accounting and links water supplies from rivers,
reservoirs and aquifers with water demands, in an integrated system. Designed to be menu-
driven and user-friendly, WEAP is a policy-oriented software model that uses water balance

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accounting to simulate user-constructed scenarios. The program is designed to assist water
management decision makers through a userfriendly menu-driven graphical user interface.
WEAP can simulate issues including; sectoral demand analyses, water conservation, water
rights, allocation priorities, groundwater withdrawal and recharge, streamflow simulation,
reservoir operations, hydropower generation, pollution tracking (fully mixed, limited decay), and
project cost/benefit analyses. Groundwater supplies can be included in the WEAP model by
specifying a storage capacity, a maximum withdrawal rate and the rate of recharge. Minimum
monthly instream flows can be specified.

One disadvantage of WEAP is the method of defining reservoir operational characteristics and it
does not allow easy comparison of different sets of operational procedures (Lancaster, 2004).
WEAP is constrained to an operational regime that determines releases based on reservoir water
level. Under normal operating conditions, above the “top of buffer” reservoir level, releases
must be 100% of demands. In the buffer zone, monthly releases are limited to a defined
percentage of the total water available for release. In the inactive zone, no releases are allowed.
Demand sites may be assigned a priority level, but the prioritization scheme is such that 100% of
first priority demands are met before any releases for lower priority demands. These WEAP
limitations result in a reservoir management scheme that, in many cases, does not adequately
reflect current procedures and is not flexible for testing alternative reservoir management
strategies.

Another significant disadvantage of WEAP is that the data input routines do not facilitate
connections with electronic data formats, such as GIS, spreadsheets or relational databases
(Lancaster, 2004). The model does not allow data from tables exported from GIS to a
spreadsheet to be copied and pasted into WEAP. To import time series data, e.g., from a GIS
database, into WEAP, ASCII text files must be created. WEAP does not link with GIS but does have
a GIS-based graphical interface which allows the user to input an ArcView “shapefile” as a
background picture to build a model on. After a WEAP simulation is completed, the results can
be displayed in a table which can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet. Once the data is in
the spreadsheet, the time series data can be uploaded to a geodatabase (Lancaster, 2004).

WEAP is relatively straightforward and user-friendly for testing the effects of different water
management scenarios. The results are easy to view for comparisons of different scenarios.
Changing input data to model newly proposed scenarios can be readily accomplished, as long as
it is not necessary to make any changes to the ASCII file of historical data.

WEAP runs on Windows based PCs. License fees are $1,000 (Single Node for government or
not-for-profit organization). The software is sold by a U.S. subsidiary in Boston.

WEAP is in widespread use throughout the world, including: Beijing Environmental Master Plan
Application System; Water resources study for the Upper Chattahoochee River, Georgia, USA;
Water management options in the Olifant River basin, South Africa; and the Rio San Juan pilot
study, Mexico. Many more examples are available on the SEI website (SEI, 2001).

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A.7 Groundwater Models

ASMWIN (Kinzelbach and Rausch 1995; Kinzelbach, 1986; Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology, 2004) - Aquifer Simulation Model for WINdows (ASMWIN), developed by the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), is a horizontally or vertically, two-dimensional
groundwater flow and transport model. The solution of the flow equation uses a finite difference
method solved with the method of preconditioned conjugate gradients (PCG) or the IADI-
method (Iterative alternative direction implicit procedure). An automatic model calibration
procedure using the Marquardt-Levenberg algorithm is available in ASMWIN. The interpolation
of the velocity uses the methods by Prickett or Pollock. Two transport simulation modules are
available: a finite-difference scheme; or a random-walk method based on Ito-Fokker-Planck
theory. Pathline and isochrone computed by Euler-integration as well as transport simulation are
possible for steady state flow fields only.

GMS (EMRL, 2004) – Similar to SMS, the Groundwater Modeling System (GMS) has been
developed by the Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory (EMRL) at Brigham Young
University. GMS provides tools for groundwater simulation including site characterization,
model development, calibration, post-processing, and visualization. GMS supports MODFLOW,
MODPATH, MT3DMS/RT3D, SEAM3D, ART3D (Simple analytical transport model),
UTCHEM (multi-phase reactive transport), FEMWATER (3D finite-element model for saturated
and unsaturated zone), PEST, and SEEP2D (2D finite-element seeepage model). GMS costs
$7,600 including all modules and interfaces.

MODFLOW (Harbaugh et al., 2000) - Several versions of MODFLOW have been released:
MODFLOW-88 (McDonald and Harbaugh, 1988); an enhanced version MODFLOW-96
(Harbaugh and McDonald, 1996); and MODFLOW-2000 (Harbaugh et al., 2000) that fully
integrates parameter estimation. MODFLOW is a three-dimensional finite-difference
groundwater model with a modular structure that allows it to be easily modified to adapt the code
for a particular application. MODFLOW simulates steady and nonsteady flow in an irregularly
shaped flow system in which aquifer layers can be confined, unconfined, or a combination of
confined and unconfined. Flow from external stresses, such as flow to wells, areal recharge,
evapotranspiration, flow to drains, and flow through river beds, can be simulated. Hydraulic
conductivities or transmissivities for any layer may differ spatially and be anisotropic (restricted
to having the principal directions aligned with the grid axes), and the storage coefficient may be
heterogeneous. Specified head and specified flux boundaries can be simulated as can a head
dependent flux across the model's outer boundary that allows water to be supplied to a boundary
block in the modeled area at a rate proportional to the current head difference between a "source"
of water outside the modeled area and the boundary block. MODFLOW is currently the most
used numerical model in the U.S. Geological Survey for groundwater flow problems.

In addition to simulating ground-water flow, the scope of MODFLOW-2000 has been expanded
to incorporate related capabilities such as solute transport and parameter estimation.

MODOFC (Ahlfeld and Milligan, 2000; and Ahlfeld, 2003) - Management of groundwater
systems that are modeled with MODFLOW can be accomplished with the MODOFC program
(Ahlfeld and Milligan, 2000; and Ahlfeld, 2003). MODOFC is designed to allow the user to

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create and solve optimization problems for hydraulic control in groundwater systems. This is
accomplished by coupling the groundwater flow simulator MODFLOW with an optimization
solver. Solving optimization problems involves two steps. First, the simulator is calibrated to
match the conditions in the system under study, using available field data, so that the simulator
provides a representation of the response of the field system to alternate pumping strategies.
Second, optimization is used to solve for the set of pump rates and well locations which
minimizes a function of pumping while satisfying constraints on the system imposed by the user.
Minimum and maximum head constraints can be used to control excessive drawdown or
mounding of the piezometric surface. Minimum head difference constraints can force
groundwater to flow in a specified direction between two locations. Minimum and maximum
pumping rates can be used to limit the amount of pumping or recharge allowed at a well.

Model Viewer (Hsieh, 2002) - Model Viewer is program for three-dimensional visualization of
groundwater model results. Scalar data (such as hydraulic head or solute concentration) may be
displayed as a solid or a set of isosurfaces, using a red-to-blue color spectrum to represent a
range of scalar values. Vector data (such as velocity or specific discharge) are represented by
lines oriented to the vector direction and scaled to the vector magnitude. Model Viewer can also
display pathlines, cells or nodes that represent model features such as streams and wells, and
auxiliary graphical objects such as grid lines and coordinate axes. Users may crop the model
grid in different orientations to examine the interior structure of the data. For transient
simulations, Model Viewer can animate the time evolution of the simulated quantities. The
current version supports the following models: MODFLOW-2000 and MT3DMS. Model
Viewer is designed to directly read input and output files from these models, thus minimizing the
need for additional postprocessing

MT3D (Zheng, 1990; Zheng and Wang, 1999; Zheng et al., 2001) - MT3D is a comprehensive
three-dimensional numerical model for simulating solute transport in complex hydrogeologic
settings. MT3D accommodates advection in complex steady-state and transient flow fields,
anisotropic dispersion, first-order decay and production reactions, and linear and non-linear
sorption. Starting in 1990, MT3D was released as a pubic domain code from the USEPA.
MT3D is based on a modular structure to permit simulation of transport components
independently or jointly. MT3D interfaces directly with the U.S. Geological Survey finite-
difference groundwater flow model, MODFLOW, for the head solution, and supports all the
hydrologic and discretization features of MODFLOW. MT3D has been applied in numerous
field-scale modeling studies in the United States and throughout the world. The MT3D code has
a comprehensive set of solution options, including the method of characteristics (MOC), the
modified method of characteristics (MMOC), a hybrid of these two methods (HMOC), and the
standard finite-difference method (FDM).

MT3DMS is the second generation of MT3D developed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Waterways Experiment Station. MT3DMS significantly expands the capabilities of MT3D,
including the addition of: a third-order total-variation-diminishing (TVD) scheme for solving the
advection term that is mass conservative but does not introduce excessive numerical dispersion
and artificial oscillation; an efficient iterative solver based on generalized conjugate gradient
methods and the Lanczos/ORTHOMIN acceleration scheme to remove stability constraints on
the transport time stepsize; options for accommodating nonequilibrium sorption and dual-domain

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advection-diffusion mass transport; and a multi-component program structure that can
accommodate add-on reaction packages for modeling general biological and geochemical
reactions.

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