Hydraulic fabric : an information framework for river channel cross section data

Abstract

The translation from discharge to water surface elevation is always an essential issue in flood forecasting and emergency response. To realize this translation, information about river channel is indispensable. In this paper, an information framework named Hydraulic Fabric is designed to store river channel information in a general way for the National Flood Interoperability Experiment (NFIE). Within this framework, cross sections are uniquely located on river network in a percentage form by linear referencing, which is the first attempt of building a national scale cross section dataset. River channel geospatial information and water surface elevation-discharge relationship will be integrated together as a single resource for every cross section in Hydraulic Fabric. A set of customized tools are created to populate Hydraulic Fabric data model, taking river channel data extracted from existing hydraulic models as the input.