TABLE OF CONTENTS Bing Zhao
Flood Control District of Maricopa County
Phoenix, Arizona
Computer models are very important to engineers because they can help engineers perform engineering tasks in a faster, cheaper and better way. There are numerous computer models related to stormwater systems design. In the United States, most computer models were developed by the federal government and local governments, which are public domain software and can be obtained without any fee. Most of them can be downloaded from INTERNET. Some private civil engineering software companies also developed propriety computer models. Many of these propriety computer models were developed by adding more graphical user interface features to the existing governmental computer models. These propriety computer models are not free.
This chapter will focus on the most commonly used public domain computer models for stormwater systems design. Some of the propriety computer models will be briefly mentioned if they are related to the public domain computer models. The sources for the public domain software to be discussed in this chapter are: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) of Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Highway Administration (FHA) of U.S. Department of Transportation, and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of U.S. Department of Agriculture. The computer models are listed belowin an alphabetic order:
BASINS (GIS ARCVIEW-based point and nonpoint sources modeling and analysis based on watershed management approach, USEPA)
FEQ (solving St. Venant equations in open channels and through control structures, USGS)
HEC-1 (rainfall-runoff modeling, HEC)
