---
title: "General Data | Water Quality"
slug: "general-data"
description: "Read about the general data specified at the top of the datafile."
tags: ["1D river modelling", "boundary conditions"]
updated: 2022-08-04T12:55:14Z
published: 2022-08-04T12:55:14Z
canonical: "help.floodmodeller.com/general-data"
stale: true
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.floodmodeller.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# General Data

The general data are specified at the top of the data file. The first two lines contain a title and the value of the ramp function. The ramp function is an integer value, 'ntramp', which specifies the number of timesteps which cover the boundary condition ramp function at the start of a flood tide in an estuary simulation. This has the effect of smoothing out sharp changes in the boundary concentration. For a fuller description of 'ntramp', please refer to the BOUNDARY section of this manual (see [Boundary Data](/v1/docs/boundary-data). An example of the structure of this section of the file is shown in Figure 1.

![WaterQualityimagesimage096.jpg](https://cdn.document360.io/5074bc26-a9ef-4bf4-b1de-a5c6ce628aca/Images/Documentation/WaterQualityimagesimage096.jpg)

*Figure 1 Example of the General Data section of the 1D Water Quality datafile*

For the description of how various pollutants can be included into your Water Quality simulation, please refer to the Paragraph 3 and Figure 3 in the page [Preparing a Water Quality Datafile](/v1/docs/preparing-a-water-quality-datafile).

## Datafile Format (initial data block)

Line 1 Title (a) Line 2 ntramp (i10)

Where:

Title = Brief description of water quality simulation

ntramp (i10) = Number of timesteps considered to cover a ramp function at the start of a flood tide. Enter zero for non-tidal systems

These two lines must be followed by data describing the longitudinal dispersion coefficient.For details of the dispersion coefficient data see the [DIFFUSION](/v1/docs/diffusion) section.

For details of the water quality processes, boundary data and source data formats see the full descriptions later in this chapter.