The Flood Modeller Catalogue Tool
    • 23 Sep 2022
    • 3 Minutes to read
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    The Flood Modeller Catalogue Tool

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    Article Summary

    The Catalogue Tool has been designed to help organise and manage all data associated to a river / floodplain modelling project using Flood Modeller and/or TUFLOW. It incorporates standardised templates to guide the user to collect all required data associated to a project.

    The Catalogue Tool has been designed to help organise and manage all data associated to a river / floodplain modelling project using Flood Modeller and/or TUFLOW. It incorporates standardised templates to guide the user to collect all required data associated to a project.

    Key benefits

    • Automatically populates most simulation input and output data
    • Easier to find items (i.e. inputs, run parameters, results)
    • Easier to monitor modelling progress
    • Easier to move files to a new location
    • Easier to check that all expected files are received

    Data

    The data a user can collect and catalogue includes:

    • Model files, e.g. Flood Modeller 1D networks (dat), events (ied) and simulations (ief) and/or TUFLOW control files (tcf), boundary files (tbc), geometry files (tgc), etc.
    • Model results, both direct, i.e. raw outputs such as zzn/zzl or xmdf, and indirect, e. g. maximum flood extent outlines and maximum grids.
    • Data to be utilised as model inputs, e.g. DTM/DEM grids, topographic shapefiles, river surveys, gauge time series records, hydrological parameters
    • Reports and other miscellaneous files associated to the project, e.g. calculation spreadsheets, email records, etc.

    When setting up a new catalogue the modeller will populate the standard fields associated to the chosen template with their model data. As a project progresses the catalogue will highlight where expected data are missing, i.e. where further work still needs to be done. Upon completion of a project the catalogue will provide a lookup for all major data associated to the project, thus providing easy access to the data for reviewers and other project stakeholders.

    It should be noted that the catalogue does not manipulate project data files, i.e. by changing them or copying them to new locations. It provides a store for all file references enabling users to locate any file associated to a project. Furthermore, it provides functionality to access these data within the main Flood Modeller user interface, e.g. to review model inputs or results or to run new simulations.

    Note:

    The first version of the Catalogue Tool has a couple of limitations that users should be aware of. It cannot check all full paths specified with model files as it only expects relative paths to be used. Furthermore, it cannot check the validity of "files within files". This is an issue within TUFLOW models where the control file (tcf) contains references to other TUFLOW files (these will be checked providing paths are defined with a relative format) and the referenced files then also reference further files (i.e. GIS datasets references in the tgc/tbc file types). The validity of these latter GIS data will not be checked and so the modeller should review these files themselves.

    The Completed Catalogue

    The end goal of creating a completed catalogue is shown below. This example can be recreated using the catalogue data given in the FloodModeller_ExampleData folder. This will be located in the "CatalogueData" folder within your "gui" folder [browse to C:\Program Files\Flood Modeller\gui\FloodModeller_ExampleData.zip, right-click on this folder and select "extract all" to unpack this to a location of your choice.]

    This user guide consists of the following sections (click a link below for further information):

    Key concepts of the Catalogue Tool

    How to use a new catalogue

    How to add simulations to a catalogue

    How to run simulations stored in a catalogue

    How to review model input and output files stored in a catalogue

    How to compare data across multiple simulations

    How to use the Simulation Builder to add to a catalogue

    How to add a new folder connection

    How to find data and results from a simulation (data scan)

    How to check for missing data (catalogue validation)

    How to add notes to an individual entry

    How to move the model folder to a new location

    The toolbar functionality


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