WMS (Watershed Modeling System) is a watershed

computer simulation Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be dete ...

and modeling software application from

Aquaveo Aquaveo is a modeling software company based in Provo, Utah that develops software used to model and simulate groundwater, watershed, and surface water resources. Its main software products include SMS, GMS, WMS, and Arc Hydro Groundwater. Hi ...

. It was originally created in the early 1990s at the Engineering Computer Graphics Laboratory at

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

. The software supports a number of hydraulic and hydrologic models that can be used to create drainage basin simulations.

Features

The Watershed Modeling System (WMS) is a proprietary water modeling software application used to develop watershed

computer simulations Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be det ...

. The software provides tools to automate various basic and advanced delineations, calculations, and modeling processes. It supports river hydraulic and storm drain models, lumped parameter, regression, 2D

hydrologic Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is calle ...

modeling of watersheds, and can be used to model both water quantity and

water quality Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of water based on the standards of its usage. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance, generally achieved through ...

. , supported models include HEC-1,

HEC-RAS HEC-RAS is a computer program that models the hydraulics of water flow through natural rivers and other channels. Prior to the 2016 update to Version 5.0, the program was one-dimensional, meaning that there is no direct modeling of the hydrauli ...

, HEC-HMS, TR-20, TR-55, NFF,

Rational Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an abil ...

, MODRAT,

HSPF Heating seasonal performance factor (HSPF) is a term used in the heating and cooling industry. HSPF is specifically used to measure the efficiency of air source heat pumps. HSPF is defined as the ratio of heat output (measured in BTUs) over the ...

, CE-QUAL-W2,

GSSHA GSSHA (Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis) is a two-dimensional, physically based watershed model developed by the Engineer Research and Development Center of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. It simulates surface water and gr ...

, SMPDBK, and other models.

History

WMS was initially developed by the Engineering Computer Graphics Laboratory at

in the early 1990s on

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

workstations. James Nelson, Norman Jones, and Woodruff Miller wrote a 1992 paper titled "Algorithm for Precise Drainage-Basin Delineation" that was published in the March 1994 issue of the '' Journal of Hydraulic Engineering''. The paper described an algorithm that could be used to describe the flow of water in a drainage basin, thereby defining the drainage basin. The development of WMS was funded primarily by The

United States Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

(COE). In 1997, WMS was used by the COE to model runoff in the

Sava River The Sava (; , ; sr-cyr, Сава, hu, Száva) is a river in Central and Southeast Europe, a right-bank and the longest tributary of the Danube. It flows through Slovenia, Croatia and along its border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally th ...

basin in

Bosnia Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...

. The software was sold commercially by Environmental Modeling Systems. It was later

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a Computing platform, computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

platforms in the mid 1990s. WMS 6.0 (2000) was the last supported version for

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrit ...

IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system ...

OSF/1 OSF/1 is a variant of the Unix operating system developed by the Open Software Foundation during the late 1980s and early 1990s. OSF/1 is one of the first operating systems to have used the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University, an ...

, and Solaris platforms. Development of WMS was done by the Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory (EMRL) at

(BYU) until April 2007, when the main software development team at EMRL incorporated as

. Royalties from the software are paid to the engineering department at BYU. The planners of the

2002 Winter Olympics The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002 ( arp, Niico'ooowu' 2002; Gosiute dialect, Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; nv, Sooléí 2002; Shoshoni language, Shoshoni: ''Soó ...

, held in Salt Lake City, Utah, used WMS software to simulate terrorist attacks on water infrastructure such as the

Jordanelle Reservoir Jordanelle Reservoir is a reservoir in Wasatch County, Utah, United States, just north of Heber City. Jordanelle Reservoir is fed and drained primarily by the Provo River, and is impounded by the Jordanelle Dam, an earthen dam. The construct ...

. A 2007 paper, "Demonstrating Floodplain Uncertainty Using Flood Probability Maps", used WMS to demonstrate a new method of floodplain mapping that included uncertainty in its calculations and results. A 2011 study to identify areas with potential groundwater in the Sinai Peninsula was performed using WMS by Hossam H. Elewa and Atef A. Qaddah. WMS was used in combination with the TOPAZ model by a group of researchers in 2012 to help determine the impact of land development on the tropical watershed in the Upper Bernam River Basin in Malaysia for the years 1989-1995. The study was done to find ways of preventing shortages of irrigation water and the occurrence of floods. Due to water shortages in Iraq, a group of engineers used WMS to study ways to optimize water collection and storage.

Version history

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

WMS Help Wiki
1995 establishments in Utah 1995 software Brigham Young University Environmental engineering Hydraulic engineering Integrated hydrologic modelling Physical geography Scientific simulation software Hydrology software

Features

History

Version history

See also

References

External links