These materials have been reviewed for their alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards as detailed below. Visit InTeGrate and the NGSS to learn more.

HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System) is a computer program that models the hydraulics of water flow through natural rivers and other channels. In the meantime, here’s a quick way to open HEC-RAS, select the plan you want to run, and then run it, all through Visual Basic for Applications in Excel. If you have HEC-RAS, and you have Excel, you can do this. You’ve arrived at The RAS Solution. The best help site for all things HEC-RAS. I do receive a lot of questions in the post comments. I try to respond to all questions, but sometimes it gets a little busy. Please be understanding. Whether you are new to HEC-RAS or a seasoned expert, I think you’ll find a lot of great stuff in here.

Overview

Students are challenged to simulate flow depth, velocity, overbank roughness, and flood inundation to analyse relationships between these factors. The data will be used to in flood risk analysis leading to a societal decision in flood zone management.

Science and Engineering Practices

Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking: Apply ratios, rates, percentages, and unit conversions in the context of complicated measurement problems involving quantities with derived or compound units (such as mg/mL, kg/m3, acre-feet, etc.). HS-P5.5:

Developing and Using Models: Develop and/or use a model (including mathematical and computational) to generate data to support explanations, predict phenomena, analyze systems, and/or solve problems. HS-P2.6:

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions: Apply scientific reasoning, theory, and/or models to link evidence to the claims to assess the extent to which the reasoning and data support the explanation or conclusion. HS-P6.4:

Analyzing and Interpreting Data: Apply concepts of statistics and probability (including determining function fits to data, slope, intercept, and correlation coefficient for linear fits) to scientific and engineering questions and problems, using digital tools when feasible. HS-P4.2:

Analyzing and Interpreting Data: Analyze data using tools, technologies, and/or models (e.g., computational, mathematical) in order to make valid and reliable scientific claims or determine an optimal design solution. HS-P4.1:

Cross Cutting Concepts

Systems and System Models: Models can be used to predict the behavior of a system, but these predictions have limited precision and reliability due to the assumptions and approximations inherent in models. HS-C4.4:

Scale, Proportion and Quantity: The significance of a phenomenon is dependent on the scale, proportion, and quantity at which it occurs. HS-C3.1:

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1. This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

   This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are

   • Scientific Accuracy
   • Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
   • Pedagogic Effectiveness
   • Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
   • Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page

   For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.

2. This material was developed and reviewed through the GETSI curricular materials development process. This rigorous, structured process includes:

   • team-based development to ensure materials are appropriate across multiple educational settings.
   • multiple iterative reviews and feedback cycles through the course of material development with input to the authoring team from both project editors and an external assessment team.
   • real in-class or field camp/course testing of materials in multiple courses with external review of student assessment data.
   • multiple reviews to ensure the materials meet the GETSI materials rubric which codifies best practices in curricular development, student assessment and pedagogic techniques.
   • created or reviewed by content experts for accuracy of the science content.
   Final review, editing, and approval by GETSI for this material is still pending.

This page first made public: Dec 5, 2019

Summary

The flow or discharge value in a river does not mean much to a lay person or a decision maker because this flow can be insignificant on a big river or can be dangerous on a small creek. Thus we must know how to translate this flow value into the water depth, velocity and the corresponding extent to understand its impact. The objective of this unit is to perform hydraulic modeling on a reach of Wabash River near Lafayette, Indiana to estimate water surface elevation and extent corresponding to a 100 year flow. Students will learn the basics of hydraulic modeling using HEC-RAS to simulate the flow hydraulics using one-dimensional steady state assumption. The outcome will be the inundation extent corresponding to the 100-year event along the reach of the Wabash River near Lafayette, IN. Make sure you have HEC-RAS available on school or personal computers prior to the start of the unit. See below for more information.

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Learning Goals

Unit 4 Learning Outcomes

A Flood Inundation Map of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers developed through HEC-RAS software. In this unit, students will use this DEM to simulate flow depth, velocity and create a flood inundation map through a HEC-RAS model as shwon. Image created by V. Merwake

Students will be able to

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• Simulate flow depth, velocity and flood inundation using a 1D HEC-RAS model and RAS Mapper
• Analyze relationships between flow depth, inundation, and overbank roughness.
• Create GIS files from HEC-RAS outputs for subsequent use in flood risk analysis
• Apply findings to a societal decision related to flood zone management

Unit 4 Teaching Objectives

• Affective: Provides students with opportunity to associate flood magnitudes and return period with actual inundation by using a computer model
• Behavioral: Promotes students skills to use HEC-RAS model for simulating high flow conditions in streams to map flood depth and inundation extents. Promotes students skills to use ArcMap/QGIS/Google Earth to view HEC-RAS results.
• Cognitive: Promotes the concept of computer modeling in students' mind as an effective tool of learning and analyses

Context for Use

The content of Unit 4 is appropriate for advanced geoscience, earth science, civil engineering courses at the junior and/or senior level in which the basics of hydrology and hydraulics are taught. Some of the concepts in the unit are little advanced for a junior level class so it is recommended to do it later in the course when students have learned little bit about open channel hydraulics and Manning's equation. The presentation included with this unit will help to get the students up to speed on some of the concepts of hydraulics and hydraulic modeling, if they never had an exposure to this topic. With the presentation and the handout, this unit can also be used as a standalone unit on mapping flood inundation extent for a given flow on the Wabash-Tippecanoe River confluence. If this unit is used with the flood hazard module, students should be encouraged to develop the flow using flood frequency analysis in Unit 2: Flood Frequency Analysis for use in this unit. If this unit is used as standalone unit, students must be provided with flow values for input to the steady flow interface. Unit 4 and Unit 5: Mapping the Impact of 100 and 500-year Floods pair well.

Description and Teaching Materials

This unit is divided into two parts. Part A involves a brief presentation on hydraulic modeling and HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System); and the second part involves the HEC-RAS lab for flood inundation mapping. Part B is the main exercise in which students actually work in HEC-RAS to make a flood map. The unit takes 1-2 class periods or a lab session, depending on how the in-class vs. homework is structured by the instructor.

The Part A is brief, and should not take more than 25-30 minutes for the presentation. Ideally this unit would be conducted in a lab so students can finish or at least get started on Part B with the HEC-RAS lab. The Part B should not take more than 40-50 minutes to finish. If it is not possible to do this unit in a lab session, the instructor can give the presentation in the classroom to introduce the unit. The students can then finish the exercise on their own. The HEC-RAS software, needed for the lab part, is available for free in the public domain, and the link is provided below. The handout includes detailed instructions. The instructions are detailed enough for student to finish the lab on their own without instructor's present, if needed. If the class have previously completed Unit 2, the students should be told to use the results from Unit 2 for Wabash River as input for the HEC-RAS model. If this unit is conducted as a standalone, the input needed for running the HEC-RAS model are also provided in the link below.

Software: For the exercise, students will need HEC-RAS 5.0.5 or higher, which is available freely in the public domain from the Hydrologic Engineering Center. HEC-RAS is a windows program. If students have Mac machines, instructions on how to install HEC-RAS on Mac are provided in the student tutorial under software section and in the teaching tips below. The download link for HEC-RAS is given below (if for some reason, the link changes or does not work in the future, searching for HEC-RAS should point to the download site):

• Presentation: Unit 4 Introduction to HEC-RAS(PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 4.5MB Dec6 19)
• This presentation gives an overview of hydraulic modeling, including the basic details of the HEC-RAS model. Specifically, the underlying equations, data needs and few functionalities of its interface are described.
• Tutorial: HEC-RAS Modeling and RAS Mapper Tutorial(Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 5.8MB Dec6 19)
• This tutorial includes instructions to complete the HEC-RAS student exercise. Students must be provided with the data before they can begin the lab. The link to the data is given below.
• Student exercise
• Exercise: Unit 4 HEC-RAS Student Exercise(Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 205kB Nov20 19)
• Data: HEC-RAS Data - Wabash(Zip Archive 2.8MB Dec3 19)
• A zip file containing the HEC-RAS data needed to do the exercise.
• Instructor files
• HES-RAS model finished - Wabash

  
  This file is only accessible to verified educators. If you are a teacher or faculty member and would like access to this file please enter your email address to be verified as belonging to an educator.

Teaching Notes and Tips

• Plan ahead so that you know you will get HEC-RAS ready to use on available computers. The software is free but it only works on Windows 64-bit computers. The easiest solution is probably to have the software loaded on computer lab machines if that is an option for you. If you are relying on student computers, you will need to dedicate time to making sure that each student (or student group) has a functional version. If a large percentage of students have Mac computers, you can point them to resources that allow the software to run cross-platform. For Mac computers, there are a few ways to install HEC-RAS. One option is to first install Windows on your Mac using Boot Camp and then install HEC-RAS. You can find more information on this on the Apple support page https://support.apple.com/boot-camp. If you do not want to go the Boot Camp route, you can explore more options provided here https://kb.iu.edu/d/ahjj.
• It is best to use the latest version of HEC-RAS to complete this unit. Any version after 5.0.5 should work fine. Some earlier versions do not have some functions related to inundation mapping.
• The last part of the tutorial related to exporting inundation layer to shapefile/KML and adding new layers to RAS Mapper are not needed for this Unit, but are needed for Unit 5 so it is good to go over those in Unit 4 to avoid questions or confusion while doing Unit 5.

Assessment

The student exercise forms the summative assessment for this unit. The first five questions, which will involve students creating a table and four plots, should have definite answers with slight variations depending on their model execution. Overall the answers should be in a reasonable range of error (0-5%). Other questions are related to student understanding of the model, its response to change in data and parameters, and how it might be applied to making societal decisions. The assessment rubric for this unit is provided below.

Unit 4 HEC-RAS Student Exercise Rubric(Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 35kB Nov1 18) Copy ps4 games.

References and Resources

Hec Ras For Mac Osx

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