SMS

New Bridge Scour Tool in SMS 13.0

By aquaveo on December 12, 2018

You are probably aware of the potential destruction caused by bridge scour. Up to 60 percent of bridge failures in the United States from 1950 to 1989 were caused by scour. Bridge scour occurs when the stream bed material around bridge piers is eroded. This can leave the pier unsupported by the stream bed, causing it to collapse.

Recent news has shown bridges of all sizes all around the world collapsing or in danger of collapsing due to scour. Such failures can have a huge negative impact on the economy and also pose a danger to the lives of those who use the bridge regularly. The Federal Highway Administration (FWHA) advised that it is far less expensive to take measures to prevent scour than to replace a bridge that fails due to scour.

Part of the scour mitigation process is evaluating countermeasures that can be taken to prevent such failures. These include onsite surveys and inspections, physical modeling such as that done at the FWHA Hydraulics Laboratory at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, Virginia, and computer modeling using tools such as the Surface-water Modeling System (SMS) from Aquaveo.

SMS 13.0 adds powerful new post-processing Bridge Scour tools that can be used to quickly test the scour effect of different pier arrangements, pile sizes and shapes, and vessel impact protection structures such as dolphins and fender rings. The Bridge Scour feature in SMS 13.0 can be used with the FWHA Hydraulic Toolbox to take advantage of its various bridge scour calculators and mapping tools.

One of the most exciting features of Bridge Scour is how it saves time. When creating the contracted section, approach, centerline, bank, abutment toe, and pier arcs, SMS 13.0 automatically assigns the arc type if they are created in order. This translates into saved time and cost, allowing you to be more productive.

Check out the Bridge Scour tool in the SMS 13.0 beta.

Blog tags: 
SMS

New Floodway Delineation Tool in SMS 13.0

By aquaveo on November 14, 2018

City planners, developers, and others have a great interest in using available land. Sometimes that land is close to areas that flood, so precautions need to be taken so the build site is not too close to (or directly in) the potential flood area. Failure to properly plan and delineate a floodway can potentially cause millions of dollars in flood damage as well as potential losses in property values. Hurricanes Harvey and Florence, with their extreme rainfall amounts, are prime example of why floodway delineation is so important.

In addition to the guidance provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the new Floodway tool in SMS allows the extents of a floodway area to be more clearly defined. This tool allows planners, developers, and others to run multiple simulations to determine the safest places to build as well as the places which may be most impacted during a significant flooding incident.

To use the Floodway tool in SMS, a project must have a either a Cartesian grid, a 2D mesh, or a 2D scatter set that has simulation result datasets for at least water depth and velocity. Two coverages are also required: a 1D hydraulic centerline coverage and a 1D hydraulic cross section coverage.

The way the Floodway tool works is by calculating how far in from both sides of a river or stream that vertical walls can be placed and raise the center of flow by the targeted maximum rise. FEMA suggests this rise should be no more than 1 foot. These calculations use the input provided by the water depth dataset, the velocity dataset, and the two hydraulic coverages to define the floodway extents along the entire length of the study area.

Once these extents are known, the data can be used when making area planning and development decisions at all levels of government and businesses. You can try out this feature in SMS 13.0 beta today.

Blog tags: 
SMS

Quickly Delineating a Floodplain

By aquaveo on October 31, 2018

How many watershed projects require knowing which areas are in a floodplain? There is a lot of debate over building on floodplains, but before that debate can happen, the location of the floodplain needs to be known.

A new feature in WMS makes this process quick and simple.

The Map Flood tool utilizes ground elevations and existing flood hazard maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to quickly visualize the impacts of possible modifications in the flood level. The tool is designed to utilize data from web services including ground elevations, flood hazard base flood elevations, and flood hazard floodplain extents.

The Map Flood tool is accessed by clicking on the Map Flood icon in the toolbar.

Running the tool will do the following:

  • Download elevation data for the area which is stored as a scatter set
  • Download base flood elevation lines for the area which is stored as a map coverage
  • Download a flood extents polygon which is stored as a map coverage
  • Download a flood insurance map as a image in the GIS module
  • Create a water surface elevation for the base flood
  • Create an offset water surface elevation for the modified flood level
  • Compute a new flood extent polygon for modified flood level

For locations that do not have FEMA data, you can use your own data to generate flood extents. As long as a ground elevation dataset and a water surface elevation have been imported into a WMS project, then the Map Flood tool can be used to create a fast floodplain. This data needs to be imported into WMS as either a 2D scatter set or a TIN.

Using the new Map Flood tool can greatly reduce the time it takes to delineate a floodplain. Try out the new Map Flood tool in WMS 11.0 today!

Blog tags: 
WMS
SMS

What We Learned at the 2018 Aquaveo User Conference

By aquaveo on October 24, 2018

Aquaveo held its first annual User Conference from October 16-17, 2018! It was amazing to get to meet so many of our users at once. We hope everyone had a great time.

For us, it was exciting to meet users from all over the world. We met users from the United States, Canada, Portugal, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Guyana, and Thailand. When asked why they came, the attendees said they came to learn:

  • How Aquaveo’s products can help with their projects
  • More of what Aquaveo has to offer
  • What Aquaveo is all about

In listening to what our users had to share with us, we took away a couple key items that you want to see improved in our software.

  1. You want modeling to go faster. We understand the demand to give results in less time is growing, so we will be looking at ways to make the process of modeling take less time and still be accurate. Some of the innovations added into Aquaveo’s software already significantly reduce the time it takes to complete a model. We hope to add more automation and tools to speed up modeling times.
  2. You need to be able to work with big data. More data is becoming available and you want to be able to use it. This means processing large files covering larger areas in more detail. At Aquaveo, we are working on doing this, including optimizing our code and adding new tools to work with large files such as lidar files.

We’d like to thank the following for participating in our user conference:

If you couldn’t make it to the Aquaveo User Conference this year, we will be having another one next year. Watch our website and Facebook page for future details. See you next year!

Blog tags: 
GMS
SMS
WMS
AHGW
CityWater

Pages