Surface Water

Surface water is an essential resource for development. First, ground water and surface water are essentially one linked resource. Thus, the interactions between surface and groundwater have to be analyzed in a conjunctive manner. Second, the development of civilization is traditionally linked to existing surface water courses. In this context, river flooding may cause severe damages during wet seasons, including both economic and personal. Surface water modelling is an essential tool to (1) quantify the interaction between surface and groundwater, (2) to forecast floods and the corresponding damage and (3) to design the corresponding alleviation measures. TK Consult AG has developed a methodology to model such issues. A salient feature is that all buildings are explicitly included in the models as inner no-flow boundary conditions. This methodology has been successfully applied to the design of flood-correction measures in different cities all over the world.

Most popular related searches

surface water

sediment transport modeling

river network

sediment transport

surface water modeling

Our services include, but are not limited to:

Flood modelling, flood hazard maps and correction measures:
Our models are calibrated against existing data sets (e.g., flood or high water episodes). Once the reliability of the model is validated, the model can be used to forecast high water scenarios corresponding to different return periods (e.g., HQ100, HQ300, HQ550). These forecasts are the basis for our design of correction measures to prevent from flood events.

Regulated conditions at hydraulic power stations, weirs and gates:
The versatility of our toolbox allows us to accomodate regulated conditions (i.e., water elevation or flux depending on what occurs elsewhere) at singular elements like weirs, dams or gates.

Model generation and calibration:
Discretization of river networks is not an easy task. Our software package Mesh_Rivers makes use of cross sections and a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to define the topography of the river talweg. The horizontal definition of the river is made by user base lines depicting the river axis and margins. As such, rivers ressemble natural shapes, including U-turns over small distances. Our toolboxes can accomodate the existing (or planned) buildings as no flow conditions easily. In addition, high resolution data like ALS can be easily accomodated to enhance model accuracy. This confers a high versatility to our river network models.

Sediment transport and wood debris:
The potential damaging effects of sediment transport and wood debris under high water conditions is large. Even under natural conditions, sedimentation and erosion processes may change the morphology of the river bed or damage structures like bridges. Our toolbox allows us to account for these effects.

Lakes:
Hydraulic and sediment transport models can be applied at lakes as well. Most often, the output of these models becomes an input for further modelling of river networks or flood episodes.