Overview

The approach taken by waterRIDE™ in flood forecasting focuses on leveraging readily available data (hydraulic modelling results, digital elevation models, property GIS datasets, critical infrastructure GIS datasets etc) to provide an indication of likely flood behaviour and, often more importantly, the consequences (or affectation) of such flooding on the community and emergency management efforts.

waterRIDE™ can be used to automatically generate flood certificates (flood reports, section 149, LIMS/PIMS etc) utilising a wide range of datasets. From an operational level,  the user simply clicks on a property, enters any manual information, then clicks ‘generate’.

A Microsoft Word template is used as a basis for defining the layout and any ‘general’ content of the certificates.

In a standard configuration, waterRIDE™ will populate designated fields in the template from datasets setup in a waterRIDE™ project such as:

  • User Entry Fields– manual entry fields that the user is prompted to populate before creating the certificate
  • Water Surface Layers– any number of waterRIDE™ water surfaces (flood, storm surge, overland flow, a combination of all three etc)
  • Water Surface Meta Data Fields– metadata attached to each water surface (eg report title, report date, DEM LiDAR flown date etc)
  • GIS Layers– data contained in fields in GIS layers relevant to the property
  • Auto Fill Fields– automatically populated fields such as date/time, username, computer name, waterRIDE™ version etc
  • Graphics – views from a waterRIDE™ project can be used in conjunction with specified output scales and image sizes to include imagery in certificates

Keywords in the Word document control where waterRIDE™ inserts the relevant data, with all formatting and layout controlled by the Word document. The following image shows an example Word document with keywords contained in curly braces {}.

Flood Certificates

Flood Certificates

Some organisations choose to run the system ‘live’, whilst others use it to batch prepare certificates for all properties that are then simply linked to each property.

Typically, a system will be built using waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager, and then operated using waterRIDE™ FLOOD Viewer licenses.

More sophisticated systems may also incorporate non-standard datasets such as information contained in corporate databases, property information systems, and billing systems, or outputting information in different formats such as SQL tables or files. In such cases, a customised waterRIDE™ “certificates engine” would be built as required.

Some of the key features of a waterRIDE™ based automated flood certificates system include:

  • Using Microsoft Word files as a template, the user has full control over the template layout
  • waterRIDE™ will populate designated fields (keywords) in the template from datasets setup in a waterRIDE™ project such as:

o    User Entry Fields – manual entry fields that the user is prompted to populate before creating the certificate

o    Water Surface Layers – any number of waterRIDE™ water surfaces (flood, storm surge, overland flow, a combination of all three etc)

o    Water Surface Meta Data Fields – metadata attached to each water surface (eg report title, report date, DEM LiDAR flown date etc)

o    GIS Layers – data contained in fields in GIS layers relevant to the property

o    Auto Fill Fields – automatically populated fields such as date/time, username, computer name, waterRIDE™ version etc

o    Graphics – views from a waterRIDE™ project can be used in conjunction with specified output scales and image sizes to include imagery in certificates

  • Access to all hydraulic parameters from the water surface (depth, level, terrain, velocity, velocity x depth, hazard etc)
  • Single or batch production mode
  • waterRIDE™ FLOOD Viewer facilitates “read only” end user access to the system
  • Can be readily setup using waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager (standard setup)
  • Customised “engines” can be readily built to suit the way your organisation operates
  • Logging and audit trails can be maintained

The base data requirements to setup a waterRIDE™ based automated flood certificates system are usually readily available in an organisation.

As a minimum, you need:

  • waterRIDE™ water surfaces
  • Land parcel GIS layer

 

Certificates are generally enriched if the following datasets are also available:

  • Aerial photography
  • Other relevant GIS layers

A basic system can be setup using the tools in waterRIDE™ FLOOD Manager. waterRIDE™ FLOOD Viewer licenses may also be useful for providing read only access to the system across an organisation.

Customised systems involving non-standard input and/or output data sources can be readily customised by WorleyParsons. On average, a customised system may be between 1 and 3 man-weeks of effort, depending on the complexity of the system. We are happy to discuss your specific requirements with you.

Further information on the above products can be found on the “products” page.