URBAN ON-LINE

Information and decision support systems in urban water municipalities and government agencies manage large and complex infrastructure systems, which represent huge investments. These organisations have also put significant efforts into automation, resulting in a number of different computerised systems. Today, such organisations collect vast amounts of data, but managers and staff may still find it difficult to access relevant information quickly.

In order to make qualified decisions, municipality managers and staff need to quickly access and process information that may reside in different and diverse computer systems and software applications. Data have great value when easily accessible to users, and properly interpreted and applied. Unless properly validated, stored and organised, data become difficult to use and lose much of their value. The challenge of the municipal staff is to turn data into knowledge and appropriate actions. DHI’s challenge and mission are to provide the best technology to support the decision-making processes.

DHI has recognised and addressed this important challenge by developing software solutions, which have proven cost-effective and practical in numerous areas within urban water management. DHI develops and implements decision support systems (DSS) based on a modular, scalable architecture. This approach makes it possible to deliver successful and effective solutions to a range of different business applications supporting operational day-to-day decisions, short-term planning and strategic long-term decisions. The URBAN ONLINE software based concepts – provides the solutions to your organisation.

More information: http://www.dhigroup.com/Software/Urban.aspx

DHI Software 2007 Release

10 new appetizers are available at http://www.dhigroup.com/upload/comingnewsr2007part2.pdf. This 2nd presentation shows examples of new features and improvements including speed enhancements in the coming release of the Marine Software primarily, e.g. in MIKE 21/3 Flow Model FM, MIKE 21 BW and new generic components like the MIKE Zero Tool Explorer.

New Tips & Tricks are available at the MIKE BASIN Tips & Tricks page

The first new Tips & Tricks Note explains how to use the MIKE BASIN Attribute tables for fast editing of MIKE BASIN features (e.g. Water Users, Reservoirs or Hydro Power nodes) without having to access the properties dialogs for each feature. One of many situations where this could be useful is when e.g. the routing method needs to be set for a large number of river reaches. Accessing the reach properties dialogs for each reach could be time consuming for large models, and in such situations direct editing in the attribute tables will speed up the process significantly.

This second new Tips & Tricks Note addresses the options for reducing the output produced by MIKE BASIN during a simulation. Per default, MIKE BASIN writes out all available result types for all features in the model, but in many cases it may make it faster to find, access and analyze the results if the number of output types is reduced. This note explains how it is done.

Both notes are available for download at MIKE BASIN Tips & Tricks

How to find a geographic coordinate system for MIKE URBAN model area

MIKE URBAN allows you to define or specify the proper coordinate system, which will be used to work with the model data. In order to use this feature, it is necessary to specify a geographic (datum) transformation to project shapefiles or geodatabase feature classes between different geographic coordinate systems (datum’s). Datum transformations are specific to geographic areas and it is necessary to select the proper such as NAD_1983_To_WGS_1984_1, NAD_1983_To_WGS_1984_5, NAD_1983_To_WGS_1984_1, and other in case of United States, for example.

Datum transformations available and geographic areas for which each transformation method should be applied can be downloaded from: http://downloads.esri.com/support/techArticles/PE9xtrans.zip

rubber dams with MIKE 21

A good example of using the rich features of MIKE 21 in ways not originally intended has recently been made by Bridgestone. In a preliminary hydraulic study of an array of rubber dams positioned along a river they applied the MIKE 21 flow simulation package to study various combinations of design height and deflation sequence in order to find out the flooding condition, i.e. if the water level exceeds the height of the walkways. A sketch of a rubber dam and the in-/deflation is shown in Fig. 1.

The modelling of the inflation and deflation of the dams is done by using a bathymetry which varies in time - i.e. every few seconds the bathymetry is updated in the region where the in-or deflation is taking place. This feature was originally developed for landslides - in order to model the wave generated by the sudden displacement of water by the land material - but has been ingeniously used in this case. Also MIKE 21’s flooding and drying capabilities for overtopping flow was important in this case.

In Fig. 2 is shown an example of simulated water level at the centre of one of the rubber dams, indicating that overflow will occur with the given design flow rate, height of rubber dam and deflation scenario.

Thus by studying combinations of height of rubber dams, positions of these and deflation sequences the optimal height and operation of rubber dams that minimises or prevent flooding can be designed.

Fig. 1 Sketch of rubber dam and inflation

Fig. 2 Simulated water level at the centre of one of the rubber dams

For further information please click here.

Would you like to share your experience?

DHI software user's who want to share their application examples with the readers of this newsletter, please send your case story to software@dhigroup.com

Upcoming Events

Hydroinformatics 2006 Annual Conference and Exposition,
September 4-8, 2006, Acropolis Congress Centre, Nice, France

Hydroinformatics Conference is a significant event in the continuous effort of three international associations - International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR), International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) and International Water Association (IWA) - associated for the first time with the Société Hydrotechnique de France (SHF) to actively promote and accelerate both research and applications of hydroinformatics in the world.

http://www.hic2006.org

We would be pleased to welcome you our booth and discuss the various modelling tools.

Please contact Mr. Ole Mark, omj@dhigroup.com for further information.

30th International Conference on Coastal Engineering - ICCE'06,
September 3-8, 2006. San Diego, USA

Come and meet us at booth 27. Further information is available here.

AGU Fall Conference,
December 11-15, 2006, San Francisco, CA, USA

OS14: Synthesis and Integration of Coastal Models and Data

There is a special session on coastal models and data which may have your interest.

Description: Synthesis and integration of data and models provides a powerful tool that is increasingly used to study the science of the coastal ocean typically with geospatial-temporal analysis. Reports are welcome on integrated models of the water column, coastal exchange and the benthos. These include cohesive and non-cohesive sediments, and their influence on ecological and biogeochemical cycles of coastal regions. We encourage presentations that feature ecological forecasts based on synthesis of data and models into databases related to a range of processes and forcing functions, including human influences. We especially encourage papers from students and contributions that reflect the diversity of the coastal environment: from coral reefs to wetlands. Anthropogenic influences likely to be of major interest to the session include coastal construction, dredging, ship wakes and outfalls.

We hope for as many papers as possible contributed on all our research areas. The deadline for abstracts submitted online is September 7. 2006.

For further details please see here