Modeling Shallow Water Flow And Transport Processes With Small Water Depths Using The Hydroinformatics Modelling System

Abstract

In hydro- and environmental systems modelling, there are several application cases where very small water depths occur, for example rainfall and runoff in natural or urban catchments, possibly associated with tracer transport. In these cases, the water depth may be in the range of millimeters to a few centimeters. The numerical simulation of the associated processes is complex, therefore robust numerical schemes are required. Two test cases using high resolution topography data are investigated with the Hydroinformatics Modelling System (HMS). In the first case, the influence of microtopography and local depressions were analyzed in an idealized urban catchment; both had a strong impact on the hydrograph. In the second one, rainfall runoff experiments, which were carried out by Mügler et al. [10] were simulated. Through parameter optimization an overall good agreement between computed and measured breakthrough curves was achieved