An Object-Oriented Framework for Water Resource Planning

This paper presents an object-oriented toolkit for building computer models for water resource planning. 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 framework for building hydrologic models. 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 in an efficient way. During 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 in described to illustrate the use of the toolkit.