OpenFlows FLOOD - Virtuosity

$ 12,010 12 months subscription license

Including 10

Accurately model and simulate extreme events using accurate and reliable flood risk analysis data to diminish impacts to human safety, decrease damages to infrastructure, and reduce loss to the economy.

Assess and mitigate urban, riverine, and coastal flooding
Build and manage hydraulic models
Calculate and analyze flood inundation areas
Add real-world context, animation, and visualization

Learn more about what OpenFlows FLOOD can do for you...

OVERVIEW

What is FLOOD?

FLOOD is flood modeling software for analyzing and mitigating flood risk in urban, riverine, and coastal areas. Using spatially distributed numerical models, users can quickly simulate all hydrological and hydraulic processes to support emergency planning and green-initiative design. Apply a multi-scale 1D/2D approach to support flood early warning systems (FEWS).

Mitigate urban flooding
Urban flooding poses risks to residents, damages property and infrastructure, and disrupts urban services. Create efficient solutions that increase the resilience of urban drainage systems and implement mitigation measures, such as low-impact development and green initiatives. Mitigate these issues by producing detailed simulations to identify bottlenecks and hotspots that hinder the capacity of stormwater drainage systems.

Minimize and prevent riverine flooding
Calculate river flow to understand, evaluate, and optimize reservoir operations to minimize and prevent damages from riverine floods. Design and improve emergency structures and outline flood-resilient land use strategies, all within a climate change context. Simulate the exchange of water between the river flow and (sub)surface flow based on hydraulic gradients. Produce inundation maps, flood risk maps, and hazard maps that address riverine flows, river defense capacity, and large-scale land use changes. Estimate the drainage network from topographic maps and to interpolate cross sections in space.

Model coastal flooding
Coastal flooding can be caused by high tides, storm surges, and tsunamis, sometimes in combination with insufficient urban drainage capacity or high upstream river flows. Dynamically model complex array of processes related to coastal flooding to find accurate solutions for defining and improving storm surge and tsunami protection plans.

Analyze flood inundation areas
Calculate the extent of flooded areas and estimate the flood hazard based on water column heights and peak flow velocities. Easily integrate models generated with OpenFlows SewerGEMS to simulate surface and stormwater flow. Create scenarios and make comparisons among different alternatives to rapidly find the best solution for flood risk mitigation.
Add real-world context, animation, and visualization
Explore and present model results using a wide range of integrated visualization capabilities, including the option to make smooth, continuous animations of the obtained results. Help stakeholders better understand the risks and impacts of flooding events and potential mitigation actions with integrated 3D reality models. Bring simulations to life by generating realistic visualizations of flood events using LumenRT.
Build and manage hydraulic models
Leverage and import many well-known external data formats to maximize ROI on geospatial and engineering data. Jumpstart the model building process and manage models effectively to keep focus on making the best engineering decisions.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is the difference between FLOOD and HEC-RAS?

All the equations and numerical methods, and source code from the 2D flood model (MOHID) is available online. This is a collaborative, free, opensource “model”. HEC-RAS is free, but not open-source which means that an advanced user is not able to check source code or modify it.

FLOOD numerical solver (MOHID) was analyzed for comparison with a benchmark study from UK Environment Agency. This methodology has been adopted as the world reference for benchmarking 2D flood modeling. FLOOD results are compatible with most solutions.

FLOOD can be used as a single tool for an integrated 2D flood model, while HEC-RAS does not have direct rain-on-grid, infiltration, or evapotranspiration. You would need an additional tool called HEC-HMS for other hydrological parameters and processes.

You do not need to specify the area or time of concentration for a catchment in FLOOD. Digital Surface model together with 2D calculation (Saint-Venant and Manning-Strickler equations) will do this for you. Additionally, you do not need to enter depression data as the 2D surface contains topographical data which is considered in runoff estimation. FLOOD has tools to remove depressions from the ground surface if required.

FLOOD is a full GIS-enabled GUI. You can handle GIS data inside (e.g. Bing Maps; shapefiles, RASTER files, etc.), including results visualization. HEC-RAS visualization needs to be handled in separate tools or 3rd party software licensing (e.g. such as ArcGIS).

Does FLOOD integrate with other products?

As part of Bentley Systems, FLOOD has an added value of being integrated into a broad portfolio and roadmap of interoperable and collaborative technologies and products across multiple disciplines and competences. Some unique examples of the advantages of being integrated into the Bentley software environment:

FLOOD can run based in DSM generated by ContextCapture, which uses photogrammetric techniques applied to surveys in LIDAR or images from cameras to generate reality mesh models.
You can seamlessly have 4D visualization of FLOOD output results in Bentley’s LumenRT, integrating life-like digital nature into simulated infrastructure designs, and create high-impact visuals for stakeholders.
FLOOD can integrate with Bentley’s OpenCities Planner, a cloud-based service that enables visualization of 2D, 3D, and GIS data in a city-scale digital twin where you can design, visualize, and communicate projects from large-scale city developments to detailed architectural design.
You can use FLOOD outputs to feed mobility modeling and accessibility in Cube software.
You can design a road using OpenRoads ConceptStation, and then generate the surface mesh model and easily ingest it in FLOOD.
You can use FLOOD projects to implement and configure flood early warning / forecasting systems, through the application of ACTION Server product.
Integration with OpenFlows SewerGEMS project allows you to use the designed 1D network and to run 1D:2D model approach inside FLOOD. FLOOD improves your efficiency for setting up 2D flow models, running, post-processing and visualizing the results. It is the only tool capable of doing the full modeling cycle with all the advanced tools for handling models and results. FLOOD can run coupled 1D (natural or artificial channels, in both surface and subsurface) and 2D (overland flow) models.
FLOOD can also be coupled with SWMM to run 1D and 2D models but integration with OpenFlows SewerGEMS provides a smoother experience.
Being a full GIS system, FLOOD can cover your needs to consume, manipulate and generate data and model results in multiple formats (e.g. shapefiles, GDAL RASTER files, Google Earth KML/KMZ, TIN files, INP drainage network models from SWMM). This allows you to establish input / output data fluxes and interoperability across an array of software products.

What are the differences between FLOOD, OpenFlows CivilStorm, OpenFlows SewerGEMS?

There are differences in the methodology adopted by FLOOD and storm-sewer products such as CivilStorm and SewerGEMS. Using CivilStorm or SewerGEMS, you must explicitly provide data in the form of specific parameters such as surface roughness values, time of concentration and depression data (if the surface has areas of ponding). All these factors are automatically considered using FLOOD.

Runoff generation and other processes are complex. With FLOOD, it is primarily generated based on the 2D surface terrain and the modules selected to run. The runoff hydrograph from a catchment in CivilStorm or SewerGEMS is based on a more simplified approach such as the SCS method which only takes the area, permeability factor (like the SCS CN) and Tc into consideration.

FLOOD provides more realistic runoff hydrographs and estimations whereas CivilStorm, SewerGEMS, or StormCAD rely on standard runoff estimation methods such as SCS CN, and IDF Curves for runoff estimation, useful for a more conservative design.

FLOOD can generate advanced water quality and pollutant dispersion modeling studies in water environments.

TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES

Areas of Application

Rivers
Estuaries
Coastal areas
Cities and urban drainage systems

Flood Simulation Due to

Heavy rainfall and storm events
Soil water saturation
Dam breaks
Levee or dike breach
Inefficient urban drainage capacity
Storm surge
Tsunamis
Sea level rise
Exceptionally high tides

Hydraulics

2D overland flow
1D river/open channel bidirectional flow
1D pipe flow model (OpenFlows SewerGEMS®/ SWMM solvers)
1D river and 1D pipe coupling with 2D overland flow
3D subsurface flow
Adaptive variable time step
Extended period simulations
Kinematic, diffusion, and dynamic wave (St. Venant equations) approaches
Multiple point discharges input
Multiple open boundary conditions
Infiltration methods: Green-Ampt and SCS Curve number
Dynamic simulation of surface and groundwater interaction
Robust, accurate, and fast numerical solvers
OpenMP parallel processing technology

Hydrology

Spatially and temporally variable precipitation
Automatic separation of precipitation into snow and rainfall
Multiple evapotranspiration methods
Water uptake by vegetation roots
Precipitation interception by vegetation

Environmental Processes

Fecal contamination dispersion
Biochemical oxygen demand
Transport and dispersion of dissolved and particulate matter
Sediment transport via erosion or deposition
Splash erosion
Advanced water quality and water pollution modeling engine: transport, dispersion, and transformation of water quality properties, nutrients, and pollutants Graphical Interface and Visualization
Rich graphical user Windows interface
Map display with dynamic zooming and navigation
Multiple background layer support in Bing
Dynamic multiparameter and multiscenario graphing
Property-based color coding and symbology
Surface water flow direction displayed across any terrain
Automatic input and result fields filtering
Automated flood and hazard mapping
User-defined cross-section flow visualization
Node and time series data and results visualization
Multiple layout templates
Static and dynamic outputs

Model Building

Automatic coupling between 2D overland flow and OpenFlows SewerGEMS or SWMM 1D drainage network models
Automatic generation of inlets from buildings and streets
Dam break outflow hydrograph generation tools
Build and manage hydraulic models
Create and edit geographical data layers (points, lines, polygons)
Computational grid generation
Digital terrain model generation, processing, and editing
Various 2D spatial interpolation methods
Digital terrain model depression removal capability
Automatic watershed and drainage network delineation
Automatic computation of watershed areas, slopes, and flow direction
Automatic construction of default cross-sections (Strahler order, drained area)
Irregular cross-sections support
Cross-section editing capability
Spatially variable data processing capabilities
Automatic generation of curve numbers from land cover data
Automatic generation of Manning coefficients
Spatial and temporal interpolation capabilities for rain gauge networks
Automatic generation of meteorological data from models and re-analysis databases