ARIDE
Assessment of the Regional
Impact of Droughts in Europe
Software Development
Institute of Hydrology, University of Freiburg
Technical Report No. 12
Technical Report No. 12
Software Development
Siegfried Demuth & Kerstin Stahl
with contributions from:
Alvarez, Javier (CEDEX)
Estrela, Teodoro (CEDEX)
Gustard, Alan (CEH)
Hisdal, Hege (UiO)
Lanen van, Henny (WAU)
Peters, Elisabeth (WAU)
Rees, Gwyn (CEH)
Santos, Maria-Joao (INAG)
Tallaksen, Lena (UiO)
Veríssimo, Raquel (INAG)
Zaidman, Maxine (CEH)
Technical Report to the ARIDE project No.12:
Supplement to the Exploitation Plan of the ARIDE Workprogramme
©
Institute of Hydrology, University of Freiburg, Fahnenbergplatz
79098 Freiburg, Germany.
Contents
1 Introduction
1
2 Software
Development
1
2.1
University
of
Oslo
(UiO)
1
2.2
Instituto
da
Agua
(INAG)
4
2.3
Centre for Hydrology and Ecology (CEH)
5
2.4
Freiburg
University
(IHF)
8
2.5
Wageningen
University
(WAU)
9
1
1 Introduction
Within the ARIDE project, several software applications were developed and are available for
further exploitation. The software development described is part of a software strategy plan,
which has been defined in the Work Programme of the ARIDE project. The partners consider
the software development as stage 1 out of 5 stages, as no budget was allocated to the ARIDE
consortium to develop software in a commercial way. Stage 1 includes a research and
development project with model development on PC and workstation platforms. In chapter 2
the software development is described in a table summarising the topics, the technical
information and the potential of further exploitation. The software development described in
the report aims at: (1) event definition (meteorological, streamflow), (2) statistical test for
persistency and trend, (3) EOF (Empirical Orthogonal Function) analysis, (4) Regional
Drought Distribution Model, (5) Visualisation and Drought Monitoring Software, (6) Colour
coded river network visualisation, (7) Simulation of daily recharges.
2 Software
Development
2.1
University of Oslo (UiO)
A) Threshold level approach for drought definition from precipitation and streamflow series
General Specification
Activity Event Definition
Aim of the computer program Statistical analysis of meteorological and streamflow drought events using a set of programs which includes:
i) calculation of percentiles from time series ii) selection of drought events for different time
resolutions (daily or monthly) and seasons iii) calculation of drought parameters statistics
(drought duration, deficit volume, etc.) from the sample of drought events
Topic
Output parameter / major result At site drought parameters
Development stage Stage 1
Routines developed and tested for two regions; the Nordic countries and the Iberian Peninsula
language (for stand –
alone software) Fortran and Pascal Programming commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts) Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements PC, Unix
Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Hydropower companies, Consultancies
Application purpose Frequency analysis and hydrological design
Further Exploitation
Necessary effort for completion of commercial software distribution
Conversion of the scripts to a set of programs with a user-friendly interface.
2
B) Persistency and trend analysis of annual drought parameter series
General Specification
Activity 2.2 Initial Time Series Analysis
Aim of the computer program Statistical test for persistency and trend
Topic
Output parameter / major result Test statistics
Development stage Stage 1-2
Tests implemented in the general time series analysis package of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE)
language (for stand –
alone software) Fortran Programming commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts) Technical Information
Hardware requirements Unix
Possible commercial user Water Authorities
Application purpose Decision making for long term drought management
Climate change studies
Further Exploitation
Necessary effort for completion of
commercial software distribution Conversion of the scripts to a stand-alone program with a user-friendly interface.
C) Empirical Orthogonal Function calculation
General Specification
Activity 2.3 Regional Drought Characteristics
Aim of the computer program EOF-analysis
Topic
Output parameter / major result Empirical orthogonal functions, weight coefficients, summary statistics
Development stage Stage 1
language (for stand –
alone software) Fortran – (The main routines in the program have been developed at Argonne National Laboratory, France Programming commercial software (for applications /scripts) Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements Unix
Possible commercial user Water Authorities and Research Institutes
Application purpose Data analyses of large data sets
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of
3
D) Drought severity area frequency curves
General Specification
Activity 2.3 Regional Drought Characteristics
Aim of the computer program Modelling and calculation of drought severity-area-frequency curves
Topic
Output parameter / major result Severity-area-frequency curves
Development stage Stage 1
language (for stand – alone software) Fortran Programming commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts) Splus Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements PC/Unix
Possible commercial user Water Authorities and Research Institutes
Application purpose To calculate return levels of droughts
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of
4
2.2
Instituto da Agua (INAG)
A) Regional Drought Distribution Model
General Specification
Activity 2.4 – Regional Drought Distribution Model
Aim of the computer program Determination of drought characteristics in a region using the regional drought distribution model. Modules: - Skewness correction
- Calculation of statistical parameters - Regional replicates simulation - Regional drought calculation - Sequential droughts calculation
- Severity-area-frequency curves param. calculation
Topic
Output parameter / major result Evaluation of the return period of regional droughts
Development stage Stage 3
Software is tested for European regions, precipitation and streamflow and different calculation procedures.
language (for stand – alone software) VisualBasic Programming commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts) Technical Infor-mation Hardware requirements PC
Possible commercial user R&D Institutions and Water Authorities
Application purpose Regional drought incidence and severity appraisal
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of commercial software distribution
5
2.3
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)
A) Electronic Atlas for Visualisation of Streamflow Drought – ElectrA
General Specification
Activity Activity 3.3 Flow Visualisation
Aim of the computer program To illustrate the changing spatial patterns of European droughts by displaying screen images of streamflow conditions over Europe.
Topic
Output parameter / major result An ‘electronic atlas’ called ElectrA. The atlas is capable of showing, in the form of digital maps, how drought conditions were distributed across Europe in past years. Percentage flow exceedance (derived using a 31-day moving window method) is used as the drought variable i.e. a flow exceedance of 90 % is equivalent to the Q90 flow.
The atlas has a full Graphical User Interface (GUI). This allows the user to select which data to display in map format, change the colour scale used to display the data, replay a series of maps as an animation, to print and save maps/animations. A basic help facility is also provided
Development stage Application developed and tested.
language (for stand – alone software) Programming
commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts)
AVS/Express Visualisation Edition
Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements PC or UNIX
Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Environment Agencies
Application purpose Hydrological Design, decision making for actions in a drought situation.
Making predictions about future spatial development of drought, given onset of drought condition.
Identifying regions vulnerable to drought, based on past frequency of drought in that area
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of commercial software distribution
Additional development in AVS/Express Developer Edition software would allow the functionality of the atlas to be improved and would allow the system to be saved as a stand-alone application.
6
B) Climate Visualisation System
General Specification
Activity Activity 3.3 Flow Visualisation
Aim of the computer program To illustrate the changing spatial patterns of European droughts by displaying screen images of climatic conditions (rainfall and temperature) over Europe.
Topic
Output parameter / major result A visualisation system which is able to display, as digital maps, pan-European distribution of monthly average rainfall and temperature in past years.
The system has a Graphical User Interface (GUI), which allows the user to select which data to display or to replay a series of maps as an animation.
Development stage Application developed and tested.
language (for stand – alone software) Programming
commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts)
AVS/Express Visualisation Edition
Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements PC or UNIX
Possible commercial user Water authorities, environment agencies
Application purpose Hydrological design, decision making for actions in a drought situation.
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of commercial software distribution
Additional development in AVS/Express Developer Edition software would allow the system to be saved as a stand-alone executable.
7
C) Near Real Time Monitoring System
General Specification
Activity Activity 5.3 Near Real Time Monitoring of droughts
Aim of the computer program To assess the technical feasibility of developing a European drought monitoring system.
Topic
Output parameter / major result Pilot software capable of dealing with automatic transfer of near real-time river level and flow data from a variety of sources across Europe.
Feasibility assessment
Development stage Data transfer software implemented
language (for stand –
alone software) Visual Basic v6 Programming
commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts)
Microsoft Access RDBMS for Windows
ORACLE RDBMS v8.1 (UNIX) incl. SQL*Connect ODBC (32 bit)
Novell GroupWise v5.5 (PC)
Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements IBM compatible PC (Pentium, 32 MB RAM)
Sun SPARC2
TCP/IP (Telnet, e-mail, WWW)
Possible commercial user Pilot system: N/A
Prospective system: Policy makers at EU level; water resource managers and planners at national & sub-national level; general public.
Application purpose Pilot system: Technical Assessment
Prospective system: Operational drought monitoring tool
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of commercial software distribution
Substantial investment required to establish operational near real-time data transfer from hydrometric agencies throughout Europe and develop robust systems for data processing and display.
8
2.4
Freiburg University (IHF)
A) Drought vulnerability visualisation
General Specification
Activity 5.1. Regional drought estimation using a river network
model
Aim of the computer program Estimation of drought vulnerability along a river network
Topic
Output parameter / major result The expected time until drought onset, if streamflow is at a mean level and dry weather would persist, can be displayed colour coded along the river.
Development stage Stage 1 in progress:
Method development and test for a region in Germany. language (for stand –
alone software) Programming
commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts)
SPANS GIS system
Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements PC
Possible commercial user Water Authorities
Application purpose Hydrological Design, decision making for actions in drought situation
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of
commercial software distribution General · Conversion of the scripts to a stand-alone program or into a more commonly used GIS such as ArcView. Creating the application for the particular region
· Data migration (river network/basin properties/etc.)
9
2.5
Wageningen University (WAU)
A) Recharge simulation
General Specification
Activity 4.1 Groundwater Droughts derived from precipitation
recharge
Aim of the computer program Simulation of daily recharge for current conditions and for scenario analysis
Topic
Output parameter / major result Time series of daily, monthly and annual recharge for a specific site with particular meteorological, soil and land use conditions
Development stage Stage 1 in progress: Program developed and tested for
catchments in The Netherlands, Spain and Poland. language (for stand –
alone software) Fortran Programming commercial software Technical Infor-mation Hardware requirements PC
Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Consultants, Research institutes
Application purpose Groundwater management, pro-active monitoring of
drought situations, and environmental impact assessment
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of
commercial software distribution Extension of the program with a user-friendly interface and pre- and postprocessing programmes
B) Simulation of groundwater level and discharge
General Specification
Activity 4.2 Groundwater Droughts derived from groundwater
levels and groundwater discharge
Aim of the computer program Simulation of 10-day or monthly groundwater levels and groundwater discharge for current conditions and for scenario analysis
Topic
Output parameter / major result Time series of :
· Spatially distributed groundwater levels
· Groundwater discharge along stretches of a river network
Development stage Stage 1 in progress: Models developed and tested for catchments in The Netherlands, Spain and UK Kingdom. language Programming commercial software (for programmed applications/scripts) Modflow-GMS, Microfem Technical Infor-mation
Hardware requirements PC, Alpha
Possible commercial user Water Authorities, Consultants, Research institutes
Application purpose Groundwater management, pro-active monitoring of
drought situations, environmental impact assessment
Further Exploi-tation
Necessary effort for completion of
10
3 Conclusion
Currently there are no formal agreements between the partners or third partners for licensing
the software to EU member states and providing a software support to purchasers. However,
each organisation in the partnership has developed commercial links for exploiting research
and development and considers the dissemination of research and development through
