Geo-portal for Sustainable Culvert Design.

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Marian Muste, Haowen Xu, Bomo Shen

Thursday 2 july 2015

17:54 - 17:57h at Central America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Water resources and hydro informatics (WRHI), (ST) Catchment hydrology, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 13H. WRHI - Catchment

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The sedimentation at multi-barrel culverts has become a widespread problem in the US Midwest as a direct consequence of the changes in land use and climate. Sedimentation occurs in the transitions of the stream to and from the culvert, expanded areas needed to accommodate the conveyance of large storm flows. Culvert designs are preceded by analyses that take into consideration hydrologic, hydraulic, and geomorphological conditions at the construction site. Less attention is typically given to a thorough assessment of the potential for sedimentation within and in the culvert vicinity. This is unfortunate as sediment cleaning at culvert is expensive, labor intensive, in many occasions and sites need to be repeated. Culvert design is based on a variety of data sources (time series, statistical analyses, maps, and other site-specific characteristics) that are typically stored in various formats in multiple data provider repositories. After construction, more data is produced through periodic culvert monitoring programs that report useful information on operation performance and associated problems. The post-construction data and information is especially important if they cover aspects that were insufficiently addressed in the design stage (such as sedimentation, debris, and environmental factors). The web-based geo-portal discussed in this paper assembles in one place the pre- and post-construction data and information irrespective of their provenance. The proposed web-accessible portal is a continuously updated resource on culvert life cycle that plays several roles: a) informs and facilitate the design of other culverts in the area; b) serves as a repository that can be mined to infer aspects of current designs in relationship with the location of the culvert in diverse geographic areas. The prototype geo-portal presented in the paper integrates: i) watershed characteristics (river network, streamflow statistics, hydrologic and soil information); ii) culvert database for the region; iii) hydraulic model for sizing culverts; and, iv) monitoring data. The portal provides various means for enabling designers and managing personnel to query and visualize these multiple resources. The platform is built using open source technologies that make the system light-weighted, low cost and flexible.