Surface Water Routing:Overland Boundary Conditions
Contents
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, or time-varying head) 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.
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 |
| 99 (Receiving cell - Downstream cell for rating curve structure ) | Put 1 |
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
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"
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
