Surface Water Routing:Overland Boundary Conditions

Overland Boundaries

Overland boundaries may be used to model coastal storm surges or areas around a standing water body. In essence, GSSHA will take a map of the boundary conditions (constant slope, constant head, time-varying head, or rating curve) and apply that condition at the beginning of each time step.

Any overland cell in the watershed domain can also have a specified discharge (constant or time varying) to represent pumping (in or out) or other diversion. Hydraulic structures that move water from cell to cell can be represented with depth verses discharge and or difference in water surface elevation verses discharge rating curves. These rating curves can be used to pass water through embankments, across streams, through topological highs, etc. Rating curves can be used on lake boundaries to pass water through an embankment to represent outlets that discharge to locations other than the outlet channel.

Setting up overland boundaries consists of 1) creating an index map describing the boundary condition of all cells, 2) creating the overland boundary mapping table, 3) if needed, creating the time series index mapping table, 4) if needed, creating the time series file, 5) if needed, create the rating curve mapping table 6) if needed, create the rating curve input file 7) adding appropriate project file cards.

Index Map

The index map is a standard index map. All cells must have a value. Usually, all cells will begin as a uniform value and then changes along the boundaries will be done to create specific instances of boundary conditions. Each specific instance of a boundary condition will have a unique ID.

Overland Boundary Mapping Table

The overland boundary mapping table is very similar to the standard style mapping tables. The table has two parameters, with the meaning of the second parameter dependent upon the first. The first parameter is a boundary type code. The second parameter is a value corresponding to the meaning of the boundary type code.

Boundary Type Code	Second Parameter Meaning
0 (Normal cell)	Put 0.00
1 (Specified slope)	Slope (e.g. 0.001)
2 (Constant specified head)	Constant water surface elevation of water in the cell
3 (Time variable specified head)	Time series index of water surface elevation
4 (Hydrograph - cfs)	Time series index of hydrograph
5 (Hydrograph - cms)	Time series index of hydrograph
6 (Rating curve - head difference - cms)	Table of difference in stage verses discharge rating curve
7 (Rating curve - upstream depth - cms)	Table of depth verses discharge rating curve
8 (Spatially interpolated time variable stage - m)	n/a (put 0)
99 (Receiving cell - Downstream cell for rating curve structure )	Put 1

Note: Every rating curve cell (Type 6 or Type 7) must at least one corresponding recieving cell (Type 99), which is the downstream cell for the rating curve. Flow for Type 6 is two way. Flow for Type 7 is one way.

The overland boundary table identifier is OVERLAND_BOUNDARY.

Time Series Index Mapping Table

The overland boundary table refers to a time series index table. This table links a unique ID value to a time series name. This table is not in the standard table format. It does not link to an index map, nor does it have any descriptions. The format is shown in the following example.

TIME_SERIES_INDEX
NUM_IDS  ##
ID    Time Series Name (text line)
[##]     “name here”
[##]     “name here”
…
[##]     “name here”

The names referred to are defined in the individual time series.

Time Series Files

Time series files contain as many time series as desired. Time series files are defined in the GSSHA wiki site. Two examples of time series are shown below.

GSSHA_TS
levee_breach
RELATIVE
0 0 0 0 0 140.0
0 0 1 0 0 139.5
END_TS


GSSHA_TS
storm_surge
ABSOLUTE
2005 8 26 4   0 2.4
2005 8 26 8   0 3.2
2005 8 26 13  0 3.4
2005 8 27 0   0 2.4
END_TS

Rating Curve Mapping Table

The overland boundary table refers to a rating curve mapping table. This table links a unique ID value to a rating curve file. This table is not in the standard table format. It does not link to an index map, nor does it have any descriptions. The format is shown in the following example.

RATING CURVE
NUM_IDS  ##
ID    Rating Curve Name (text line)
[##]     “name here”
[##]     “name here”
…
[##]     “name here”

The names referred to are defined in the individual rating curves. As in the example below

RATINGCURVES
NUM_IDS 2
ID    rating curve name
50    "Rating Curve50"
51    "Rating Curve51"

Rating Curve Files

Rating curve files contain as many rating curves as desired. Rating curve files contain one set of rating curves for each structure. Each rating curve has the following format.

GSSHA_ES
"Rating curve name"
depth (m) discharge (cms)
depth (m) discharge (cms)
depth (m) discharge (cms)
END_ES

Note: The first input is cell depth (m) for type 7 and is the difference between cell water surface elevations (m) for type 6.

As in the following example:

GSSHA_ES
"Rating Curve50"
0.000000	0.000000
0.818143	24.994654
3.272572	49.989309
7.363287	74.983963
13.090288	99.978617
END_ES

Spatially and Temporally Variable Stage File

To have the storm surge stages interpolated to the boundary create an XY depth interpolation file. The values are not depth but stages in meters. NOTE: for GSSHA 8.0 the header is XY_OV_STAGE_INTERP, whereas for previous versions of GSSHA it was (incorrectly) XY_OV_DEPTH_INTERP

XY_OV_STAGE_INTERP
[number of gages]
X [each gage easting value]
Y [each gage northing value]
[year] [month] [day] [hour] [minute] [gage #1 value] [gage #2 value] ...
[year] [month] [day] [hour] [minute] [gage #1 value] [gage #2 value] ...
[year] [month] [day] [hour] [minute] [gage #1 value] [gage #2 value] ...
[year] [month] [day] [hour] [minute] [gage #1 value] [gage #2 value] ...
...

For example:

XY_OV_STAGE_INTERP									
5									
X	743412.31	675161.03	652525.71	251224.93	604305.25				
Y	4582801.94	4572318.44	4559592.63	4548343.87	4518397.2				
2012	10	29	12	0	0.8283	0.5495	0.5414	0.7831	0.5523
2012	10	29	14	0	0.9645	1.4259	1.5505	0.8368	1.8235
2012	10	29	16	0	0.7527	1.5248	1.6994	0.6723	2.0972
2012	10	29	18	0	0.3420	0.7494	0.8889	0.3373	1.2548
2012	10	29	20	0	0.0176	0.0001	0.0369	0.1087	0.2590
2012	10	29	22	0	0.2004	0.0001	0.0001	0.3098	0.0001
2012	10	30	0	0	0.8208	0.5090	0.5310	0.7512	0.6108
2012	10	30	2	0	1.0031	1.4519	1.6236	0.8041	2.1080
2012	10	30	4	0	0.8444	1.8160	2.0437	0.6136	2.6048
2012	10	30	6	0	0.4855	1.1748	1.4069	0.3401	2.0673
2012	10	30	8	0	0.2058	0.3960	0.5193	0.1664	0.8295
2012	10	30	10	0	0.3325	0.0982	0.1174	0.3688	0.2724
2012	10	30	12	0	0.8814	0.6527	0.6226	0.7310	0.4715
2012	10	30	14	0	1.0983	1.4520	1.5254	0.8495	1.6849
2012	10	30	16	0	0.8776	1.7790	1.9182	0.6377	2.1099
2012	10	30	18	0	0.4231	1.1192	1.2517	0.2886	1.5497
2012	10	30	20	0	0.0524	0.2370	0.2426	0.0001	0.1465
2012	10	30	22	0	0.0141	0.0001	0.0001	0.0001	0.0001

Project Cards

To turn on the overland boundary process, include the card

OV_BOUNDARY

in the project file. To include the time series files, include the card

TIME_SERIES_FILE  "filename.ext"

in the project file. This card may be repeated for as many time series files as are needed.

To include rating curve files, include the card

ELEV_SERIES_FILE "filename.ext"

To include the spatially and temporally variable stage file, include the card

XYBDYINPUT_OV_STAGE_INTERP  "filename.ext"

Example

Using the two time series and the two rating curves defined above , the mapping tables would look like this:

INDEX_MAP  "bdy.idx" "bdy"


TIME_SERIES_INDEX
NUM_IDS 2
ID    Time series name
1     "levee_breach"
2     "storm_surge"

RATINGCURVES
NUM_IDS 2
ID    rating curve name
50    "Rating Curve50"
51    "Rating Curve51"


OVERLAND_BOUNDARY "bdy"
NUM_IDS 3
ID    desc…     				bdy_type   	bdy_param
1      normal cells				0		0.00
2      specified slope				1		0.001
3      storm surge				3		2
50     depth rating curve 50                    7               50
51     dh rating curve 51                       6               51
99     receiving cell                           99              1

Assuming the time series are in a file called 'flood.ts', and the rating curves are in the file 'rating.rtc' the project file would have the following cards:

OV_BOUNDARY
TIME_SERIES_FILE  "flood.ts"
ELEV_SERIES_FILE  "rating.rtc"

GSSHA User's Manual

5 Surface Water Routing

5.1     Channel Routing

5.2     Overland Flow Routing

5.3     Channel Boundary Conditions

5.4     Overland Boundary Conditions

5.5     Embankments

5.6     Overland/Channel Interaction

5.7     Introducing Discharge/Constituent Hydrographs

5.8     Overland Routing with Snow

5.9     Overland Routing with BMPs