Hydrology is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydrologist. Hydrologists are scientists studying earth or environmental science, civil or environmental engineering, and physical geography. Using various analytical methods and scientific techniques, they collect and analyze data to help solve water related problems such as environmental preservation, natural disasters, and water management.
Hydrogeology is the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth's crust. The terms groundwater hydrology, geohydrology, and hydrogeology are often used interchangeably, though hydrogeology is the most commonly used.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) is a dynamic rainfall–runoff–subsurface runoff simulation model used for single-event to long-term (continuous) simulation of the surface/subsurface hydrology quantity and quality from primarily urban/suburban areas.
An hydrological transport model is a mathematical model used to simulate the flow of rivers, streams, groundwater movement or drainage front displacement, and calculate water quality parameters. These models generally came into use in the 1960s and 1970s when demand for numerical forecasting of water quality and drainage was driven by environmental legislation, and at a similar time widespread access to significant computer power became available. Much of the original model development took place in the United States and United Kingdom, but today these models are refined and used worldwide.
HEC-RAS is simulation software used in computational fluid dynamics – specifically, to model the hydraulics of water flow through natural rivers and other channels.
Groundwater models are computer models of groundwater flow systems, and are used by hydrologists and hydrogeologists. Groundwater models are used to simulate and predict aquifer conditions.
SMS is a complete program for building and simulating surface water models from Aquaveo. It features 1D and 2D modeling and a unique conceptual model approach. Currently supported models include ADCIRC, CMS-FLOW2D, FESWMS, TABS, TUFLOW, BOUSS-2D, CGWAVE, STWAVE, CMS-WAVE (WABED), GENESIS, PTM, and WAM.
Hydrus is a suite of Windows-based modeling software that can be used for analysis of water flow, heat and solute transport in variably saturated porous media. HYDRUS suite of software is supported by an interactive graphics-based interface for data-preprocessing, discretization of the soil profile, and graphic presentation of the results. While HYDRUS-1D simulates water flow, solute and heat transport in one-dimension, and is a public domain software, HYDRUS 2D/3D extends the simulation capabilities to the second and third dimensions, and is distributed commercially.
MIKE 11 is a computer program that simulates flow and water level, water quality and sediment transport in rivers, flood plains, irrigation canals, reservoirs and other inland water bodies. MIKE 11 is a 1-dimensional river model. It was developed by DHI.
MIKE FLOOD is a computer program that simulates inundation for rivers, flood plains and urban drainage systems. It dynamically couples 1D and 2D modeling techniques into one single tool. MIKE FLOOD is developed by DHI.
The Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) is designed to simulate the precipitation-runoff processes of dendritic drainage basins. It is designed to be applicable in a wide range of geographic areas for solving the widest possible range of problems. This includes large river basin water supply and flood hydrology, and small urban or natural watershed runoff. Hydrographs produced by the program are used directly or in conjunction with other software for studies of water availability, urban drainage, flow forecasting, future urbanization impact, reservoir spillway design, flood damage reduction, floodplain regulation, and systems operation.
GSSHA is a two-dimensional, physically based watershed model developed by the Engineer Research and Development Center of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. It simulates surface water and groundwater hydrology, erosion and sediment transport. The GSSHA model is used for hydraulic engineering and research, and is on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) list of hydrologic models accepted for use in the national flood insurance program for flood hydrograph estimation. Input is best prepared by the Watershed Modeling System interface, which effectively links the model with geographic information systems (GIS).
Kalypso is an open source modelling program. It focuses on numerical simulations in water management and ecology such as the generation of inundation and flood risk maps by hydrologic and hydrodynamic models and GIS functionality.
Vflo is a commercially available, physics-based distributed hydrologic model generated by Vieux & Associates, Inc. Vflo uses radar rainfall data for hydrologic input to simulate distributed runoff. Vflo employs GIS maps for parameterization via a desktop interface. The model is suited for distributed hydrologic forecasting in post-analysis and in continuous operations. Vflo output is in the form of hydrographs at selected drainage network grids, as well as distributed runoff maps covering the watershed. Model applications include civil infrastructure operations and maintenance, stormwater prediction and emergency management, continuous and short-term surface water runoff, recharge estimation, soil moisture monitoring, land use planning, water quality monitoring, and water resources management.
ANUGA Hydro is a free and open source software tool for hydrodynamic modelling, suitable for predicting the consequences of hydrological disasters such as riverine flooding, storm surges and tsunamis. For example, ANUGA can be used to create predicted inundation maps based on hypothetical tsunami or flood scenarios. The ANUGA name without qualification is used informally to mean the ANUGA Hydro tool.
EPANET is a public domain, water distribution system modeling software package developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Water Supply and Water Resources Division. It performs extended-period simulation of hydraulic and water-quality behavior within pressurized pipe networks and is designed to be "a research tool that improves our understanding of the movement and fate of drinking-water constituents within distribution systems". EPANET first appeared in 1993.
Simcenter Amesim is a commercial simulation software for the modeling and analysis of multi-domain systems. It is part of systems engineering domain and falls into the mechatronic engineering field.
The stochastic empirical loading and dilution model (SELDM) is a stormwater quality model. SELDM is designed to transform complex scientific data into meaningful information about the risk of adverse effects of runoff on receiving waters, the potential need for mitigation measures, and the potential effectiveness of such management measures for reducing these risks. The U.S. Geological Survey developed SELDM in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration to help develop planning-level estimates of event mean concentrations, flows, and loads in stormwater from a site of interest and from an upstream basin. SELDM uses information about a highway site, the associated receiving-water basin, precipitation events, stormflow, water quality, and the performance of mitigation measures to produce a stochastic population of runoff-quality variables. Although SELDM is, nominally, a highway runoff model is can be used to estimate flows concentrations and loads of runoff-quality constituents from other land use areas as well. SELDM was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey so the model, source code, and all related documentation are provided free of any copyright restrictions according to U.S. copyright laws and the USGS Software User Rights Notice. SELDM is widely used to assess the potential effect of runoff from highways, bridges, and developed areas on receiving-water quality with and without the use of mitigation measures. Stormwater practitioners evaluating highway runoff commonly use data from the Highway Runoff Database (HRDB) with SELDM to assess the risks for adverse effects of runoff on receiving waters.
Flowmaster Ltd. was a leading British Engineering Simulation Software company based in Towcester, UK. Its flagship 1D CFD product, also named ‘Flowmaster’, was first released commercially in 1987 although initial versions went back to the early 1980s having originated from BHRA, the not-for-profit British Hydromechanics Research Association, later to become the BHR Group.
