Winter School on the GEOframe system

The course for doctoral students, post docs and young researchers in Hydrology, Forestry, and related disciplines will cover the simulation of the hydrological cycle of catchments of various sizes with the GEOframe system. To know about GEOframe and GEOframe-NewAGE, please refer to here.

They say that all models are wrong but useful. However, with better tools you forecast and decide better.

The course will enroll at most thirty students and will be held at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of Trento from January 8 to January 18 included.
The course will be of totally 68 hours (8 a day) of which 34 (4 each day) will be dedicated to laboratory and personal work under the supervision of tutors. The course includes as option to get an exam certification, upon the completion of an exercise, to have doctoral credits.

Subscription at: https://webmagazine.unitn.it/en/evento/dicam/44808/geoframe-newage-winter-school

Instructors

• Riccardo Rigon
• Michele Bottazzi
• Niccolò Tubini

with material prepared by

• Giovanna Dalpiaz
• Marialaura Bancheri

The  topics treated has been:

• Tuesday, January 8: Introduction to the course - What is OMS - What is GEOframe - Using Python and Jupyter for visualising Inputs and Outputs 
• Wednesday, January 9- Catchments and Hydrologic Response Units delineation 
• Thursday and Friday, January, 10 - 11 - Treatment of spatial data and Calibration  
• Monday January 14 - Estimation of radiation components 
• Tuesday, January 15 - Evaporation and Transpiration 
• Wednesday, January 16 - Rainfall-Runoff modelling with various NewAGE components 
• Thursday, January 17 - Rainfall-Runoff modelling with various NewAGE components 
• Friday, January 18 - Opinions on hydrological modelling. Exercises on assignments.
• Epilogue and thanks

Go to the first day

Why choosing GEOframe over other models/platforms ? I would say for:

• Flexibility: GEOframe is not a model but a system of components that interact at run-time. You can chose among various components options for any of the processes.
• Expandability: If you like to program, with a little investment in Java you can write your own component and make them to interact with the others without having to reinvent the wheel.
• Parallelism. Components work in parallel when their tasks do not interact, but this is transparent for you (we call it implicit parallelism). 
• Spatial discretisation. A catchment is subdivided in parts (HRU) which can be modeled separately and are computed in parallel. The network structure is used to achieve the spatial parallelism. Its spatial modularity can be used to add/cut part of the basins without having to redo the spatial analysis, for doing multisite calibration, to progress the analysis of a larger basin in parts that are assembled together eventually.
• Beyond-state-of art components.  Besides traditional approach to processes, we implemented a few new ideas for all the processes we covered.
• Reliability.  GEOframe is currently used for the flood forecasting in real time by Regione Basilicata. It is not just a system for research that does not work in real cases. 
• Tracers studies. Not treated in the school are present tools for doing tracers studies,
• Process based modelling.  Not treated in the school, we have tools for integrating Richards equation in 1D, and we are developing tools for integrating it in 2d and 3d coupling it with the energy budget. These components will be able to interact with the other. We also started new developments on freezing soil and snow modelling.

The cost of the course for early subscribers is 270 Euros which includes lunch and parsimonious coffee-breaks  Member of SII, The Italian hydrological Society have a discount of 20 Euros. Cost of late subscribers (after November 15, 2018) is 370 Euros. 

After November 15 some work will be required to participant in order to setup their tools for running GEOframe. Installation of Java (version 8), installation of the Object Modelling System console, Installation of Python and Python notebooks, testing the use of some file formats. After the accomplishment of the requirements, students will be allow to bring their own study cases at the School.

Who wants to have early information or clarifications can write to me: riccardo.rigon at unit.it. Subscription page at:

https://webmagazine.unitn.it/en/evento/dicam/44808/geoframe-newage-winter-school

New Project for GEOframe documentation on OSF

We announce that, parallel to this blog, it was just opened an OSF project called GEOframe that contains the complete documentation of the various components developed. Information will continue, however, to compare here too.

GEOframe is already a big tree and it will grow more and more. Click on the Figure to access the documentation site.

Kriging documentation component

This is the documentation of the JGrass-NewAge Kriging component . Clicking on the  link you will redirect to the Kriging OSF site.

The general theory for the component can be found at: https://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net/gmd-2017-310/

When using this software please cite the paper.

OMS Richards 1D integrator

This is the documentation of the OMS Richards 1D integrator. Clicking on the following link you will redirect to Slideshare.
https://osf.io/tgyau/

OMS Project of the JGrasstools

Dear GEOframe developers and users,

it has been a while since the latest post. Don't worry, we are not on vacation (we wish!) but we are working on many different tasks.
The newest is the creation of the OMS project for the use of the JGrasstools within the console.
Thanks to the OMS version of the JGrasstools, it was easy to create the simulation files for the most commonly used tools, such as the pitfiller, the definition of the flow direction, the extraction of the net and of the basins and so on.

The project, in its classical organization, has data, jar files, sim files and outputs. It is public on our organization in GitHub and available at the following link:  (https://github.com/GEOframeOMSProjects/OMS_Project_JGrasstools).

 Please, use it and let us know if everything is working.

If you don't find the sim file you are looking  for, please contact us or try to create your new one!
The creation of a sim file is a really simple task, especially when the code is well implemented and commented.

So, don't be shy, try and enjoy it!

Digital watershed model component documentation

This is the documentation of the JGrass-NewAge basin partition (digital watershed model) component. Clicking on the following link you will redirect to Slideshare.

http://www.slideshare.net/wuletawu/jgrassnewage-digitalwatershedmodelcomponent

How to start with JGrass-NewAge system

The objective of this post is to briefly describe JGrass-NewAGE system for  those who wants to apply it for their research, starting from scratch. For this, obviously, one need to have what is JGrass-NewAGE and its philosophy. The good starting point is the paper of Formetta et al. 2014 and Formetta et al. 2011. Both papers give the first and simplified overview, without going into details of any of the components of the system, of what is JGrass-NewAGE system. 

                                                              Components of JGrass-NewAGE system

As seen from the diagram, JGrass-NewAge contains modelling solution for almost all the hydrological systems of interest.  For one to start to use JGrass-NewAGE, the operational procedures can be as follows:

1. Define your control volume of your research interest: the first thing is to define your control volume. Are you interested  for a particular  hydrological processes at site specific, or is it at a single hillslope unit, or a basin scale which has internal spatial variability ?  If it is at site specific/a single hillslope, you need to prepare the  point/polygon shape file for which hydrological quantities are required to estimate. Any GIS can be used to prepare the shape file.  In the case of basin scale modelling,  however, the preparation of the digital watershed model is based on customised GIS for a particular model is usually the prerequisite. Hence, in JGrass-NewAGE, we used Spatial toolbox endowed with various JGrasstools that can automatically extract the GIS information that is necessary for hydrological simulations. The theoretical (and practical) understanding of this GIS tools and the procedures need to be followed are presented in Formetta et al. 2014 and Abera et al. 2014 papers. So one need to start from this steps if wanted to use NewAGE system for a basin scale modelling.

The final goal of this step is to obtain two GIS data: (1) the river network enumerated according to various channel coding systems and also the pfafstatter systems, and (2) the HRUs polygon shape files with some attributes such as area, elevations etc. One can use the GIS interface of Spatial toolbox, now integrated in gvSIG GIS, or s/he can use this sim file that can automatically extract the two GIS data set from DEM (note that I didn't explain what is sim file and what are the prerequisite installations needed to do this sim file).

2. Modelling solution of any of the components: once you have the proper control volume, the next step is to define your research interest. Are you interested in spatial interpolation of any meteorological forces having some in-situ data? are you interested to estimate  energy (addition) budget, or Evapotranspiration, or discharge or storage? This is important question  you have to address, because it is important  to deal with the right component.  If you are interested in the whole hydrological system,  in this case,  you need to use all the components.  Since the motive of the object modelling component framework, which NewAGE is based,   makes it easier to connect all the components to simulate the last output, hiding the intermediate.  

Now lets start what could be your interest, and  mention some of the modelling solutions.  

A. Interpolation of meteorological data. If someone has few meteo measurements, but are not enough to capture the spatial variability of the basin, then, what we generally do is generate time-series data for each control volume. Details on this can be found here, and the sim file that can automatically estimate the spatial information can be found here.   

B. Modelling shortwave and long wave radiation, from which Net radiation at both site and areal scale can be estimated. If you don't have these meteorological forcing  but needed for your research,  you can pick these components and generate one/all forcing (shortwave radiation, long wave radiation, and net radiation).  The sim file for such activities, with good documentation can be found at  geoframe blog.  

C. Evapotranspiration modelling.  Once the net radiation estimated as energy component, and temperature interpolated with the interpolation component, then this component can be used to estimate the potential  evapotranspiration of each control volume. 

D. Rainfall-runoff modelling. similarly the inputs to the rainfall-runoff model are prepared by the above components (i.e kriging for interpolation the rainfall, and net radiation and the evapotranspiration component to generate the evapotranspiration time series data) and the rainfall-runoff component uses the two GIS data set defined in step one, to solve discharge at each river links in the basin. A sample paper on the procedure is given by Formetta et al. 2011 and Abera et al. 2016.  If your case, in terms of data availability, is different from this steps e.g if you don't have measured data, an exemplary work on the integration of JGrass-NewAGE system with  satellite data can be find at Abera et al. 2016. 

                             NewAge discharge simulation at each channel links

E. You need to calibrate a model. All models has a parameters, and you need data to calibrate each component, and the calibration component  can be connected to the other (model of interest to be calibrated). Examples of those works are the following:

- Modeling shortwave solar radiation using the JGrass-NewAge system, Formetta eta al. 2016: this show you the detail model of shortwave and how to connect this component with the calibration component.

- Snow water equivalent modeling components in NewAge-JGrass, Formetta et al. 2014: The connect the snow water equivalent with the calibration component

- Site specific parameterisations of long wave radiation: Formetta et al. 2016: This calibrate the long wave radiation model parameters

Once you define your research to use JGrass-NewAge, you can focus at the component of interest. I hope this can give you some tips. Of course plenty of information, slides, presentation about JGrass-NewAge is available at AboutHydrology blog. 

If you have a clear idea on what do you want from JGrass-NewAge, the team members are happy to work with you. 

I hope this helps….

To be updated….