An object-oriented application framework for building water resource information and planning tools applied to the design of a flood analysis system

An object-oriented framework for building computer based modelling tools for water resource planning is presented. The focus is on building a program for flood calculations in river systems with several reservoirs and water transfer structures. The foundation for the flood model is a general application framework for building hydrological modelling tools. The general framework provides the user with tools for describing the structural components of the hydrological system, their relation in the system topology and controlling the behaviour of the system during simulation. Hydrological models are often data intensive, and the framework is equipped with tools to handle both time series and spatially-distributed data efficiently. During the development, effort has been put into supporting future changes and extensions to the model system, as well as creating sound reusable components that will benefit future development and maintenance. A flood modelling application in the Norwegian river Gudbrandsdalslågen is described to illustrate the use of the toolkit.