How to setup and run simulations in Flood Cloud

The procedure for running models in the Flood Cloud is as follows:

1. Open a Flood Modeller project and add the simulations you want to run into your Project panel > Simulations section.

2. On the 'Simulations' tab of the main Flood Modeller toolbar select the 'Run Flood Cloud' button:

   This opens up a very similar interface to the Flood Modeller Batch Runner, but with some different functions included in the toolbar. Click the 'Add from project' button and any simulations loaded into the 'Simulations' section of the Flood Modeller project panel will automatically populate the Flood Cloud simulation table:

   

   Select the simulations to include (using the check boxes to manually select and/or the 'Select All' button provided) and click 'OK' to add the simulations to the Flood Cloud interface.

3. The functions provided in the Flood Cloud toolbar are as follows:

   • Settings: enables you to start and stop cloud servers, specifically how these will operate (in terms of concurrent simulations) and review remaining credits. See below for further details.
   • Save: saves the current cloud settings to a file (.ipf extension) to enable the same settings to be quickly recalled later
   • Add from project: automatically adds all simulation files from your current Flood Modeller project (i.e. 1D .ief, 2D xml, etc)
   • Add from file: displays browse window for you to select one or multiple simulation files from your system
   • Remove: removes highlighted rows from the simulations table. Click on a row to highlight it (in blue), click with Shift or Ctrl keys depressed to highlight multiple rows
   • Remove all: removes all simulations from the simulations table
   • Select all: marks all loaded simulations as selected for running, signified by a tick in the 'Run' column of the simulations table
   • De-select all: removes all ticks from the 'Run' column of the simulations table, so no simulations are selected for running
   • Download results: starts the process of downloading available results, i.e. from completed simulations. Note that this procedure will happen automatically by default as a batch is running (you can change the default behaviour via the 'Options' tab in the 'Settings' window). However, this 'Download' button is required to retrieve results from previously completed sessions, accessed via the 'History' button.
   • Run selected: runs all ticked simulations
   • Cancel: ends currently highlighted runs early. To cancel all or multiple simulations within an active batch, select by highlighting rows in the table (not by ticking/unticking 'Run' boxes) and then click the 'Cancel' button
   • Detail: display progress windows for all simulations being run in a batch. These data are displayed below the simulations table (see below for further information)
   • History: enables you to recall progress of a batch run from an earlier session, e.g. if you start a batch in the cloud, switch off and go home, you can recall the batch the following day to review progress and/or download results. It also provides a log of previous jobs.

4. To start your required cloud server resources, click the 'Settings' button on the toolbar. The procedure for this is described in the help page How to configure a Cloud account

5. To run simulations in Flood Cloud, ensure they all contain a tick in the 'Run' column of the table. Ticks can be added by:

   • Clicking the 'Select All' button in the toolbar – this ticks all simulations listed in the table
   • Highlighting one or multiple rows by clicking on rows with the Ctrl or Shift keys depressed – then right-click on your selection and select 'Include' from the displayed menu (or 'Exclude' to untick)
   • Click on an individual tick box to select individual simulations

6. After starting your selected simulations; you can click the 'Detail' button to show progress through each simulation. This will display a progress window for each selected simulation. Click in the 'Run' column to select or de-select a simulation. An active simulation will auto-update data displayed in its progress window at regular intervals through the run.

   Included in the tabular progress data for cloud runs is an estimated finish time for each simulation. It should be noted that this is always specified in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

   Examples of the simulation progress window are shown below.

   

   Options are provided to change the data plotted or displayed in the table. Furthermore, you can drag any progress window to a different part of your display or expand to full screen.

   At any time, you can zoom in on part of a displayed chart. To zoom you need to hold down the shift key and then drag a zoom area on the graph (Alt + mouse click zooms out). Alternatively, you can also use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in/out after clicking on the graph. If you do zoom in, it is best to zoom all the way out before switching plot type.

   At the end of a simulation the progress bar will turn green (if 100% is successfully reached) or red (if the model failed to complete).