Geographic information system (GIS) technology has been used for many years to develop solutions to water resource problems - assessing water quality, determining water availability, preventing flooding, understanding the natural environment, and managing water resources on a local or regional scale. The development of ESRI® ArcGIS™ software created an opportunity to design a new way of representing water resources data. The result is Arc Hydro. Developed by leaders from industry, government, and academia, Arc Hydro is a data structure that links hydrologic data to water resources modeling and decision-making methods. Now hydrologic water resource models and information systems can be more closely integrate with GIS. This book presents Arc Hydro concepts, components, and applications. It describes how to - Create hydro networks of rivers and streams - Define drainage areas linked via relationships to a hydro network - Represent channel shape using three-dimensional models - Connect geospatial features to time series measurements recorded at gauging sites. Hydrologic data is becoming available to model an ever-increasing portion of the world's water features at the same time that the ease of use of the technology is attracting professionals other than hydrologists. The Arc Hydro model provides a standardized way of describing this data so that it can be used consistently and efficiently to solve water resource problems at any spatial scale. Arc Hydro: GIS for Water Resources is both a blueprint of the model itself, and the definitive overview of GIS in hydrology from the leading expert in the field.
