Tutorials

These tutorial series is designed to provide an elementary understanding on setting up a basic stand-alone hydrologic model (HEC-HMS) and an open channel hydraulic model (HEC-RAS). In addition, the material covers the basic functionality of ERSI ArcGIS for water resources engineering and the integration of GIS with H&H analyses utilizing the HEC-GeoHMS and HEC-GeoRAS tools, as well as, HEC-DSS for model integration, automation and floodplain mapping.

These tutorials were designed based on the Mason Watershed project and intentionally set-up to provide a realistic experience to Mason students. However, we truly hope that this is beneficial to the broader community in general as well.

The tutorials are the result of a continuous effort from our research group students over time. We have also based this work on the guidance provided by Dr. Dean Djokic from ESRI during a summer internship in 2009 and one of my PhD advisors course materials, Dr. Francisco Olivera from Texas A&M University.

• Tutorial: Beginners Guide to ArcGIS

Tutorial

• Tutorial: GIS Data Collection for Water Resources Engineering

Become familiar with the National Elevation Dataset (NED), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) data portals, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Water Data portal, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) portal.

Tutorial

• Tutorial: Basic Spatial Analyst for Water Resources Engineering

Delineate GMU watershed using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst-Hydrology tools. 

Tutorial

Data (54 MB)

Solution (Part 1 of 2) (238 MB)

Solution (Part 2 of 2) (80 MB) (add Part 2 to Part 1 *GeoDatabase* after download)
 

• Tutorial: Setting up a HEC-HMS model

Calculate the design hydrograph for a bridge construction project based on the given data and instructions. 

Tutorial

Solution (362 KB)

• Tutorial: Integration of GIS to hydrological modeling: HEC-GeoHMS

Create a HEC-HMS model of the George Mason University watershed using the GeoHMS toolbar in ArcMap.

Tutorial

Data (155 MB)

Solution (174 MB)

• Tutorial: Setting up a basic HEC-RAS model

Create a HEC-RAS model of the George Mason University watershed using HEC-RAS.

Tutorial 

Data (32 KB)

Solution (22 KB)

• Tutorial: Integration of GIS to hydraulic modeling: HEC-GeoRAS

This tutorial is designed to walk you through the process of creating flood maps products from a HEC-RAS simulation including extracting flood delineation polygons, water depths and velocity rasters. It also includes running a simple steady flow simulation with HEC-RAS from a previously created HEC-GeoRAS set-up.

Tutorial - PreProcessing

Tutorial - PostProcessing

Data (93 MB)

Solution - PreProcessing (1.5 MB)

Solution - PostProcessing (2.5 MB)