software development - uni-freiburg.de · 2001-04-09 · contents 1 introduction 1 2 software...

ARIDE Assessment of the RegionalImpact of Droughts in Europe

Software Development

Institute of Hydrology, University of Freiburg

Technical Report No. 12

December 2000

Technical Report No. 12 Software Development Siegfried Demuth & Kerstin Stahl with contributions from: Alvarez, Javier (CEDEX) Estrela, Teodoro (CEDEX) Gustard, Alan (CEH) Hisdal, Hege (UiO) Lanen van, Henny (WAU) Peters, Elisabeth (WAU) Rees, Gwyn (CEH) Santos, Maria-Joao (INAG) Tallaksen, Lena (UiO) Veríssimo, Raquel (INAG) Zaidman, Maxine (CEH) Technical Report to the ARIDE project No.12: Supplement to the Exploitation Plan of the ARIDE Workprogramme © Institute of Hydrology, University of Freiburg, Fahnenbergplatz 79098 Freiburg, Germany.

Contents 1 Introduction 1

2 Software Development 1

2.1 University of Oslo (UiO) 1

2.2 Instituto da Agua (INAG) 4

2.3 Centre for Hydrology and Ecology (CEH) 5

2.4 Freiburg University (IHF) 8

2.5 Wageningen University (WAU) 9

3 Remarks 10

1

1 Introduction

Within the ARIDE project, several software applications were developed and are available for further exploitation. The software development described is part of a software strategy plan, which has been defined in the Work Programme of the ARIDE project. The partners consider the software development as stage 1 out of 5 stages, as no budget was allocated to the ARIDE consortium to develop software in a commercial way. Stage 1 includes a research and development project with model development on PC and workstation platforms. In chapter 2 the software development is described in a table summarising the topics, the technical information and the potential of further exploitation. The software development described in the report aims at: (1) event definition (meteorological, streamflow), (2) statistical test for persistency and trend, (3) EOF (Empirical Orthogonal Function) analysis, (4) Regional Drought Distribution Model, (5) Visualisation and Drought Monitoring Software, (6) Colour coded river network visualisation, (7) Simulation of daily recharges.

2 Software Development

2.1 University of Oslo (UiO)

A) Threshold level approach for drought definition from precipitation and streamflow series

General Specification

Activity Event Definition

Aim of the computer program Statistical analysis of meteorological and streamflow drought events using a set of programs which includes:

i) calculation of percentiles from time series ii) selection of drought events for different time

resolutions (daily or monthly) and seasons iii) calculation of drought parameters statistics

(drought duration, deficit volume, etc.) from the sample of drought events

Topic

Output parameter / major result At site drought parameters

Development stage Stage 1 Routines developed and tested for two regions; the Nordic countries and the Iberian Peninsula

language (for stand –alone software)

Fortran and Pascal Programming

commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts)

Technical Infor-mation

Hardware requirements PC, Unix

Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Hydropower companies, Consultancies

Application purpose Frequency analysis and hydrological design

Further Exploitation

Necessary effort for completion of commercial software distribution

Conversion of the scripts to a set of programs with a user-friendly interface.

2

B) Persistency and trend analysis of annual drought parameter series


Activity 2.2 Initial Time Series Analysis

Aim of the computer program Statistical test for persistency and trend

Topic

Output parameter / major result Test statistics

Development stage Stage 1-2 Tests implemented in the general time series analysis package of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE)


Fortran Programming


Technical Information

Hardware requirements Unix

Possible commercial user Water Authorities

Application purpose Decision making for long term drought management Climate change studies

Further Exploitation


Conversion of the scripts to a stand-alone program with a user-friendly interface.

C) Empirical Orthogonal Function calculation


Activity 2.3 Regional Drought Characteristics

Aim of the computer program EOF-analysis

Topic

Output parameter / major result Empirical orthogonal functions, weight coefficients, summary statistics

Development stage Stage 1


Fortran – (The main routines in the program have been developed at Argonne National Laboratory, France

Programming

commercial software (for applications /scripts)


Hardware requirements Unix

Possible commercial user Water Authorities and Research Institutes

Application purpose Data analyses of large data sets

Further Exploi-tation


Conversion of the scripts to a program with a user-friendly interface.

3

D) Drought severity area frequency curves


Activity 2.3 Regional Drought Characteristics

Aim of the computer program Modelling and calculation of drought severity-area-frequency curves

Topic

Output parameter / major result Severity-area-frequency curves

Development stage Stage 1


Fortran Programming


Splus


Hardware requirements PC/Unix

Possible commercial user Water Authorities and Research Institutes

Application purpose To calculate return levels of droughts



Conversion of the scripts to a program with a user-friendly interface.

4

2.2 Instituto da Agua (INAG)

A) Regional Drought Distribution Model


Activity 2.4 – Regional Drought Distribution Model

Aim of the computer program Determination of drought characteristics in a region using the regional drought distribution model. Modules: - Skewness correction - Calculation of statistical parameters - Regional replicates simulation - Regional drought calculation - Sequential droughts calculation - Severity-area-frequency curves param. calculation

Topic

Output parameter / major result Evaluation of the return period of regional droughts

Development stage Stage 3 Software is tested for European regions, precipitation and streamflow and different calculation procedures.


VisualBasic Programming



Hardware requirements PC

Possible commercial user R&D Institutions and Water Authorities

Application purpose Regional drought incidence and severity appraisal



Software is complete for distribution

5

2.3 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)

A) Electronic Atlas for Visualisation of Streamflow Drought – ElectrA


Activity Activity 3.3 Flow Visualisation

Aim of the computer program To illustrate the changing spatial patterns of European droughts by displaying screen images of streamflow conditions over Europe.

Topic

Output parameter / major result An ‘electronic atlas’ called ElectrA. The atlas is capable of showing, in the form of digital maps, how drought conditions were distributed across Europe in past years. Percentage flow exceedance (derived using a 31-day moving window method) is used as the drought variable i.e. a flow exceedance of 90 % is equivalent to the Q90 flow. The atlas has a full Graphical User Interface (GUI). This allows the user to select which data to display in map format, change the colour scale used to display the data, replay a series of maps as an animation, to print and save maps/animations. A basic help facility is also provided

Development stage Application developed and tested.


Programming


AVS/Express Visualisation Edition


Hardware requirements PC or UNIX

Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Environment Agencies

Application purpose Hydrological Design, decision making for actions in a drought situation. Making predictions about future spatial development of drought, given onset of drought condition. Identifying regions vulnerable to drought, based on past frequency of drought in that area



Additional development in AVS/Express Developer Edition software would allow the functionality of the atlas to be improved and would allow the system to be saved as a stand-alone application.

6

B) Climate Visualisation System


Activity Activity 3.3 Flow Visualisation

Aim of the computer program To illustrate the changing spatial patterns of European droughts by displaying screen images of climatic conditions (rainfall and temperature) over Europe.

Topic

Output parameter / major result A visualisation system which is able to display, as digital maps, pan-European distribution of monthly average rainfall and temperature in past years. The system has a Graphical User Interface (GUI), which allows the user to select which data to display or to replay a series of maps as an animation.

Development stage Application developed and tested.


Programming


AVS/Express Visualisation Edition


Hardware requirements PC or UNIX

Possible commercial user Water authorities, environment agencies

Application purpose Hydrological design, decision making for actions in a drought situation.



Additional development in AVS/Express Developer Edition software would allow the system to be saved as a stand-alone executable.

7

C) Near Real Time Monitoring System


Activity Activity 5.3 Near Real Time Monitoring of droughts

Aim of the computer program To assess the technical feasibility of developing a European drought monitoring system.

Topic

Output parameter / major result Pilot software capable of dealing with automatic transfer of near real-time river level and flow data from a variety of sources across Europe. Feasibility assessment

Development stage Data transfer software implemented


Visual Basic v6 Programming


Microsoft Access RDBMS for Windows ORACLE RDBMS v8.1 (UNIX) incl. SQL*Connect ODBC (32 bit) Novell GroupWise v5.5 (PC)


Hardware requirements IBM compatible PC (Pentium, 32 MB RAM) Sun SPARC2 TCP/IP (Telnet, e-mail, WWW)

Possible commercial user Pilot system: N/A Prospective system: Policy makers at EU level; water resource managers and planners at national & sub-national level; general public.

Application purpose Pilot system: Technical Assessment Prospective system: Operational drought monitoring tool



Substantial investment required to establish operational near real-time data transfer from hydrometric agencies throughout Europe and develop robust systems for data processing and display.

8

2.4 Freiburg University (IHF)

A) Drought vulnerability visualisation


Activity 5.1. Regional drought estimation using a river network model

Aim of the computer program Estimation of drought vulnerability along a river network

Topic

Output parameter / major result The expected time until drought onset, if streamflow is at a mean level and dry weather would persist, can be displayed colour coded along the river.

Development stage Stage 1 in progress: Method development and test for a region in Germany.


Programming


SPANS GIS system



Possible commercial user Water Authorities

Application purpose Hydrological Design, decision making for actions in drought situation



General �� Conversion of the scripts to a stand-alone program or

into a more commonly used GIS such as ArcView. Creating the application for the particular region �� Data migration (river network/basin properties/etc.) �� Regionalisation of the relevant parameters.

9

2.5 Wageningen University (WAU)

A) Recharge simulation


Activity 4.1 Groundwater Droughts derived from precipitation recharge

Aim of the computer program Simulation of daily recharge for current conditions and for scenario analysis

Topic

Output parameter / major result Time series of daily, monthly and annual recharge for a specific site with particular meteorological, soil and land use conditions

Development stage Stage 1 in progress: Program developed and tested for catchments in The Netherlands, Spain and Poland.


Fortran Programming

commercial software



Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Consultants, Research institutes

Application purpose Groundwater management, pro-active monitoring of drought situations, and environmental impact assessment



Extension of the program with a user-friendly interface and pre- and postprocessing programmes

B) Simulation of groundwater level and discharge


Activity 4.2 Groundwater Droughts derived from groundwater levels and groundwater discharge

Aim of the computer program Simulation of 10-day or monthly groundwater levels and groundwater discharge for current conditions and for scenario analysis

Topic

Output parameter / major result Time series of : �� Spatially distributed groundwater levels �� Groundwater discharge along stretches of a river

network Development stage Stage 1 in progress: Models developed and tested for

catchments in The Netherlands, Spain and UK Kingdom.

language Programming


Modflow-GMS, Microfem


Hardware requirements PC, Alpha

Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Consultants, Research institutes

Application purpose Groundwater management, pro-active monitoring of drought situations, environmental impact assessment



Models will not commercially be distributed. Too specific skills needed.

10

3 Conclusion

Currently there are no formal agreements between the partners or third partners for licensing the software to EU member states and providing a software support to purchasers. However, each organisation in the partnership has developed commercial links for exploiting research and development and considers the dissemination of research and development through software to be a high priority for a subsequent phase of the work.

software development - uni-freiburg.de · 2001-04-09 · contents 1 introduction 1 2 software...

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