Volume of water in a basin with reference to incremental height of DAM

Question

I have a DEM of my area. I did watershed analysys with archydro.

I want to calculate "Volume of water in a basin with reference to incremental height of DAM"

Is there any method, tool to give output with info of at h1-v1, h2-v2,......hn-vn(at h-height , v-volume) in tabular or any other form, if we give input values of "min height" at which dam footing with "incremental height" and do calculations up to "max height".

Please let me know if any software/tool is doing above calculation. Thanks, Prasad.

Answer 1

If you have the 3D Analyst extension, use the Surface Volume tool.

It's possible to automate this calculation in Python to get volumes at different heights (from an incremental height change). (Note: this example is with version 9.3, but it isn't too difficult to convert it to arcpy version 10).

# ArcGIS version 9.3
import arcgisscripting
import re

# Edit this section
step_size = 10 # metres; reduce this if you want finer resolution
num_steps = 20 # increase this, if you need more steps
workspace = r'C:\Some\path\to\folder'
raster_file = 'mytopo.tif'

gp = arcgisscripting.create()
gp.CheckOutExtension ('3D')
gp.workspace = workspace

# Start from the minimum elevation
min_rast = gp.GetRasterProperties(raster_file, 'MINIMUM')

# Start CSV output of elevation/volume relationship
print('step, height, elev, volume')
for step in range(num_steps):
    height = float(step*step_size)
    elev = min_rast + height
    gp.SurfaceVolume_3d(raster_file, '', 'BELOW', elev)
    result = gp.GetMessages()
    volume = float(re.findall(r'Volume= *([\d\.]+)', result)[0])
    print(', '.join([repr(x) for x in [step + 1, height, elev, volume]]))

produces this CSV output:

step, height, elev, volume
1, 0.0, 195.72373962402344, 0.0
2, 10.0, 205.72373962402344, 89383.136320076999
3, 20.0, 215.72373962402344, 537710.29799682996
4, 30.0, 225.72373962402344, 1616009.8535998999
5, 40.0, 235.72373962402344, 4022313.9784607999
6, 50.0, 245.72373962402344, 10139496.423829
7, 60.0, 255.72373962402344, 22423139.656699002
8, 70.0, 265.72373962402344, 125592027.17357001
9, 80.0, 275.72373962402344, 601472924.93704998
10, 90.0, 285.72373962402344, 1454118895.066
11, 100.0, 295.72373962402344, 2659321774.0138998
12, 110.0, 305.72373962402344, 4271651250.0858998
13, 120.0, 315.72373962402344, 6145982306.6198997
14, 130.0, 325.72373962402344, 8248103003.7566004
15, 140.0, 335.72373962402344, 10540914755.195
16, 150.0, 345.72373962402344, 13094286080.875
17, 160.0, 355.72373962402344, 15855580342.691999
18, 170.0, 365.72373962402344, 18894132090.799
19, 180.0, 375.72373962402344, 22168466487.139
20, 190.0, 385.72373962402344, 25702467387.048

Answer 2

Hes just wants to place a plane across a digital terrain model, similar to volumetric measurement. I think you can do this in arcscene.

Manually, You could just count the number of cells that are below 10m, 20m.... and times that by the cell size to get an area. Then you could re-color those cells and it would give you what you want. For the dam extent. Also clip the raster where the dam is located in order to bound the area.

Depending on the DTM you are using there are maybe some lidar softwares that could help you out.

Answer 3

If I understand your question correctly the you would like to calculate a volume of water in a basin at various intervals below an incrementing reference plane.

If you have access to 3D analyst, you could use the Surface Volume tool to do this but it will be a bit tedious as you will need to change the reference plane elevation parameter for each change of elevation. In my case, I needed to change the elevation plane at variable increments sometimes 0.5m or less and the depth was as much as 100m.

You can automate this process programatically and change the elevation plane parameter each time you iterate a loop. Personally, I use a VB .Net Add-in to output the plane elevation, volume, 3D Area to a text file. You might be able to automate this in a model builder as well.

Answer 4

I'm not perfectly clear on what you want in the end, but my approach to this would be to use contours. Set the base contour to the elevation of the dam, then the increment to the water levels you want. You'd need to delete the extra contours that you don't need, convert to polygons (they should be closed loops) and that's your area of submersion.

This is a fairly simplistic approach, and I'd agree with the comments by whuber and tomek, particularly if you need to account for flowing water. But for standing water levels this should be as accurate as your DEM.

Answer 5

Try this tool, it loops the surface volume function in ArcGIS... ftp://lnnr.lummi-nsn.gov/GIS_Scripts/MultiVolumes10/