Instruction manual

Example application of FLO-2D for inundation

analysis

1. First of all, you have to download the software

From “https://www.flo-2d.com/flo-2d-basic/” submit your name and email address, you will
receive a return email.

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 Setup will download as a ZIP Compressed file of FLO-2D basic model. Unzip it and double click
the setup file.

2. Run FLO-2D Software by clicking the icon created on the desktop.

Grid Developer System (GDS) main window will appear.

Familiarize with the options in the toolbar.

3. Start a new project. Open a new project with ASCII grid file. [There are seven different
options to start a new project. In this particular example, we use an ASCII grid file
(containing terrain elevations) created in ArcGIS environment to create a new project.]

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 4. Select DEM.acs file and open it. A dialogue-box shows the number of elevation points,
maximum elevation and minimum elevation. The region with dots appear on the screen.

To fit whole region with a clearance, a large frame is defined. Increase the upper right corner
coordinates by about 1000 and reduce the lower left corner coordinates by about 1000.
For this example adjust coordinates as below;
Upper right corner X 412,500
Upper right corner Y 497,000
Lower left corner X 397,000
Lower left corner Y 481,500

5. Create a new grid system, by clicking the “Create Grid” command on the “Grid” menu.
Select grid element size of 200m for this example.

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Grid position is decided based on the coordinates of upper left grid element. To cover the full
extent of ASCII grid file with some allowance, use lower value (approximately 500) compared to
the default for X and higher value (approximately 500) for Y. For this example, use X value as
389,900 and Y as 497,000.

The following figure displays a system of 200 m square grid elements overlaid on ASCII terrain
grid file.

6. Setup the computational domain by defining the boundary from a shapefile.

First, import the polygon shapefile containing catchment boundary from the “Import
shapefile” option in the “File” menu.

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Then click on “Setup Computational Area” in the “Grid” menu and select “Define
Modeling Boundary from shapefile…” option.

A dialogue box appears to select the corresponding shapefile. Select “Boundary.shp”

already created for this example.

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Then, the system displays the message.

Once you click on yes, a dialogue box will appear to select the grid system numbering.
Keep the default selection.

Once you click OK, then the computational domain is created.

You have the option to make the shapefiles invisible. Select “view” menu and click on
“layers list…” option.

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 It shows a dialog box containing all the layers (shapefiles) added in to the project. Then,
select the layer that you want to make invisible and unclick the check box in front of
“Visible”. Click on “apply” and then “OK”. It makes the layer invisible.

7. To save the project, go to “File” menu and select “Save FLO-2D files…” command.

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 It is essentially to fill the time control and plot variables before saving. For this particular
example, fill “Simulation Time” as 120 hrs while the “Output Interval” as 1 hr. Keep
everything else as default and click on “Save FLO-2D input files”. File has to be saved
as “FPLAIN.dat”.

Make sure to save the file in the same folder of the ASCII file used to open the project.

8. Then the elevation layer has to be created to assign elevation values for each grid element.
Here, you have to interpolate the elevation values in the ASCII file to have a single value
for each grid element. Go to “Grid” menu and select “Interpolate Elevation Points” option.
Interpolation is based on inverse distance weighting.

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 Once you click on “Interpolate Elevation Points”, following window appears. Keep
defaults and click “OK”. Now, an elevation value is calculated and assigned for each grid.

9. Input Manning’s n-values based on landuse pattern in this example.

Import the shapefile containing landuse pattern data. Make sure that Manning’s
coefficients have been assigned within the ArcGIS environment before importing to FLO-
2D.

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Once click on “Import Shapefile” and select the respective shapefile (for this example
select landUse.shp), following window will appear. Select the numeric field as Manning’s
n value field. The minimum and maximum values will be displayed and the map is updated
accordingly.

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To compute the Manning’s n-values based on the information of the shapefile, use
“Compute Manning Coefficients…” command in the grid menu to assign a single
Manning’s coefficient for each grid element.

Select the relevant shapefile and Manning’s coefficient field. A average value for
Manning’s roughness coefficients is assigned for each grid.

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10. To define the stream path, import the stream shapefile. The stream shapefile for this
example is named as “Channel.shp”. Zoom the view to the required extent (only to the
full extent of stream).

Use “Create Channel Segment with a Polyline” command in the “Tools” menu and
digitize along the stream path.

Make sure to draw from upstream to downstream and not to discontinue at the middle
(whole length has to be drawn at once).

The digitized stream path will appear on the map in blue colour.
Note: We will consider only the main channel for this particular example.

Check whether the elevation of the most downstream grid is lower than that of the
upstream contiguous grid. For that zoom near the downstream grids. Then go to “View”
menu and click on “Grid Element Elevation Values” option.

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It shows the elevation values of each grid. There, check whether the outflow grid element
has lower elevation value than the upstream contiguous grid. If not, re-align the channel
segment.

From the above figure, you can see the most downstream channel grid has lower elevation
than the upstream contiguous grid. In order to rectify this issue, click on the channel and
select “Realign Channel”.

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Now the channel becomes editable.

Modify the channel segment in a way that most downstream grid has a lower elevation
than upstream contiguous grid.

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11. Left click on any grid with channel segment and select “Edit Channel Segment
Parameters”.

Almost all the channel parameters can be assigned and edited in the following window.
For this example, we consider a rectangular channel with a uniform width of 200 m and
3m depth.
Channel shape can be rectangular (R), trapezoidal (T), or natural cross-section (N). it
should be assigned in the following window.
Input “R” for “Assign this Shape to Selection”. Select all the rows and assign “R”. Then
click on “Edit” to assign other parameters.

Once you click on “Edit”, following dialogue box appears.

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Select the whole “width” column and type 200 in the box in front of “Assign this Value
to Selection” option. Then click on “Assign this Value to Selection”. The selected cells
are filled with the given value.

Similarly, assign channel depth as 3 m.

Then click OK to update the edits in the main “Parameter Editor” window.
Then click on “Calculate Right Banks” button. Once it is done click OK. Automatically
drawn pink colour line can be seen on the map. That is the right bank of the river.
If there is a warning message to say that there are zero right banks, you have to manually
define the right bank. Further, if the visual observation shows some distortions of the right
bank, those also need to be manually rectified.
Following figures show examples for zero right banks and distortions of right bank.

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12. Once the right bank, you can view and edit the channel bed profile. Go to “File” menu
and click on “Run PROFILES”.

Click on “View Segment Bed Profile” and you can see the profiles of channel bed, left
bank and right bank. Here, you can edit or modify the channel segment parameters such
as bed elevation, channel depths and n-values.

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Once you click on “View Segment Bed Profile” option, appearing window updates as
follows.

Follow the instructions given in magenta colour to edit the slope and other parameters.
First click on “View Local Reach” command. Then the curser becomes an arrow. Then
click on the place where you want to modify. It zooms the selected profile and magenta
colour small arrow comes under the channel bed profile line. You can move that arrow
with up and down arrow keys.

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 Once the curser moved to the node (grid) which has to be modified, click on “View/Edit
Xsection Data” command. It gives a panel to edit and modify the channel segment
parameters.
There you can edit bed elevation, channel depth, n-value and channel length within that
grid for the selected node.

Once the editing is completed click OK. Then save the project and replace all the files
from new update. In this particular example we are not going to change the parameters
here.

13. Define inflow and outflow boundary conditions either by right-clicking on the
inflow/outflow grid or by using a grid menu after selecting the inflow/outflow grid.

Create an inflow hydrograph.

The first column is the time step (by default the software consider hourly time steps) and
the second column is the discharge.
Time step and the corresponding discharge are in excel file. Create excel spreadsheet with
two columns, first row should be zeros and there should be no headings.

Save it as “Formatted Text (Space delimited) (*.prn)” format. Close the spreadsheet. Then
change the extension as “*.asc”. Inflow hydrograph is now saved as “Inflow.asc”.

Select the inflow grid by using the icon in toolbar. Then go to the “Grid” menu, and
select “Assign Parameters to Selection” and “Inflow/Outflow Condition”.
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The following dialogue box will appear and allows editing these boundary conditions.

When you click on “Read”, a dialogue box will appear to select the file type. In this
particular example, use “ASCII file” option and select “Inflow.asc” file.

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Hydrograph data will appear [Use initial time as 0 and final time as 120. The initial value
pair should always be (0,0)]. Click on “View Graph” and assign the initial and final time
steps in the next window.

Click on “Save” button to save the data in “.HYD” format and then click “OK”.

Outflow boundary condition is also defined in the similar manner for both channel and
flood plain. For this particular example, the outflow boundary condition considered as
“outlet element”

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 For this outflow condition, the outflow grid discharges all the inflow to it off the grid
system using an approximate normal depth flow condition. The outflow grid is essentially
a sink.

14. Rainfall can be added by either importing from ArcInfo ASCII grid file (in the file menu
select import ArcInfo ASCII grid file) or manually input the rainfall data through rain
option under the tools menu.
In this example, we use the second option.

Here you have to do some calculations first.

It requires the total storm rainfall and you have to calculate the fraction of cumulative rain
occurs during each time step.
Let us consider a single flood event. Raw data given is incremental rainfall time series.
Add a row to the top for 0th time step with 0 rainfall. Calculate the total storm. Then create
another column to calculate cumulative rainfall at each time step. Calculate the fraction
of cumulative rainfall from the total storm at each time step.
𝐶𝑢𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑡 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑝𝑖
𝐹𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑢𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 =
𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑚

Then open new excel sheet and create the first column with “R”. The second column is
for time steps. It should start with zero and goes up to the number of time steps (selected
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duration for event). Then copy those “Fraction of Cumulative Rainfall” values and paste
as numbers. First data pair should always be (0,0). Save the file in “.prn (space
delimited)” format as “Rain.prn” and close the window.
Go to the “Tools” menu in the FLO-2D, GDS and select Rain.

Following window appears.

Input total storm rainfall and rainfall abstractions.
For this particular example use total storm rainfall as 298 mm and rainfall abstractions
as 10 mm.
If you exactly do not know the abstract amounts, it also can be used as a calibration
parameter.
Then you have to manually enter time and fraction of total rainfall.
Entering hundreds of time steps manually is a time-consuming task. Therefore, you have
to enter a small table first.

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 Time % total rain
0 0
1 0.2
2 0.5
3 0.8
4 1

Then click OK. It creates “Rain.dat” file.

Next, “Save” the project and “Exit”.

Go to the project folder. Open both “Rain.dat” and created “Rain.prn” files in Notepad.
Copy all records in “Rain.prn” and paste in “Rain.dat” file from the third row. Save and
close.
Then open FLO-2D GDS window. Go to “File” menu, and click on “New Project” “from
FLO-2D Project”.

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 Go to “Tools” menu and then select “Rain” option. Now you can see the updated table.

15. Run the project.

Go to file menu and select “Run FLO-2D…”

16. Once you click on “Run FLO-2D…” following dialogue box appears. Run the project by
hitting on “Run FLO-2D (Save files)” by keeping the default parameters. Later you can
use those parameters as calibration parameters to calibrate the model for some known
discharge at outflow grid or any other grid.

17. Once the simulation is completed, you can view the results in “*.out” files in text format.

18. Map based representation of the results can be viewed in Mapper. Go to “File” menu click
on “Run Mapper” and “Mapper PRO” option.

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 Then Mapper window appears.

19. To view the results, go to “File”menu and click on “Read FLO-2D results…” option. Then
browse to the folder containing your results. Open “FPLAIN.DAT” file. It shows a gridded
map, which represent the topography of the basin.

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 Mapper window includes several options to view results.

20. To view the inundation extent, click on dropdown at “Hazard Maps” icon and select
“hazard map” option.

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 Following dialog box appears. There you can classify the flood severity in to three groups,
based on maximum inundation height and the product of maximum velocity times
maximum inundation height.

Following table shows the current definition of the flood severity. You can change those values
according to the site conditions.

Once you click on “compute”, a grid based hazard map is created. Colour code for severity is pre-
defined in the model as, yellow, orange and red for low, middle and high respectively.
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Convert “Grid based hazard map” in to contours, by clicking on “Hazard Map (Shaded Contours)”
under the dropdown of “hazard map” icon.
Grid based and contour based hazard maps can be drawn in mapper as follows.

21. Maps of “Time for One Foot”, “Time for Two Feet” and “Time for Maximum Depth” can
be drawn (both grid and contour formats) from dropdown comes under “Time for Depths”
icon.

22. Maps of impact force, static pressure, specific energy, channel and flood plain velocities
and depths also can be created in Mapper.

23. Create a contour to show inundation extent of a particular inundation height. Go to “Tools”
and click on “Create Area of Inundation Layer”.

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Once you click on “Create Area of Inundation Layer” option, following window will
appear. Define the required inundation height there.

Following figure shows the respective contour map (black colour)

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24. Moreover, you can have a plot of flow depths for a given profile. Go to “Tools” menu
and click on “Plot Flow Depth Profile” option.

Then the curser becomes a cross. You can draw the required profile as follows.

Once the required profile is defined, a separate window appears to show the plots of ground
surface elevations and maximum flow elevations along the given profile.

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 This option can be used in anywhere at the channel or flood plain. Hence, this allows you
to identify safe areas and risky area.

25. Further, you can run the “Run PROFILE” command again to view the results. Here, click
on “View Profiles” option to view the maximum flood levels along the channel.

If you select “Maximum Water Surface” option and click “OK”, the respective profile along the
channel shows with the channel profile.

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Similarly, graph for “Peak Discharge” and “Water Surface Elevation” at any given time step can
also be drawn.

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