The River Analysis Package (RAP) contains a suite of tools for analysing the hydrology and hydraulics of a river and their relationship to ecology (Stewardson and Marsh, 2004). This section contains a summary of the tools within RAP. Most of the tools can be integrated with Source through the Plugin Manager.
Location in Source:
The stand-alone RAP tools and accompanying user guides are available from www.toolkit.net.au/RAP.
Table 1 provides plugin file and locations details of these tools.
Table 1. RAP tools
| RAP tool | Name of plugin file | Location in Source |
|---|---|---|
| Hydraulic Analysis | C:\Program Files\eWater\<Source version>\Plugins\Ecology.RAP.HA.dll | |
| Time Series Analysis | C:\Program Files\eWater\<Source version>\Plugins\Ecology.RAP.TSA.dll | |
| Time Series Manager | C:\Program Files\eWater\Source version\Plugins\Ecology.RAP.TSM.dll | Tools » Plugins Ecology.RAP.TSM |
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The Hydraulic Analysis (HA) module of the River Analysis Package (RAP) is based on the Flow Events Method (Stewardson and Gippel, 2003) of allocating environmental flows. The HA module allows you to construct :
- Construct a one dimensional hydraulic model of a river reach and to determine ecologically-relevant flow thresholds based on hydraulic parameters such as water depth and velocity
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C:\Program Files\eWater\Source version\Plugins\Ecology.RAP.HA.dll |
Location in Source:
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- ; and
- Create a time series of potentially ecologically relevant hydraulic data for subsequent analysis in
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- Time series Analysis module
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- and comparison with biological data or alternative flow regimes.
The main output from the hydraulic analysis module is a time series of hydraulic parameters.
HA can import HECRAS (US Army Corp of Engineers - USACE) cross-section data, as well as user input cross-section data, to create a 1-D hydraulic model of a river reach. The FldWav (pronounced "Flood Wave") (USA National Weather Service) 1-D hydraulic model is used to calculate hydraulic parameters in the reach for multiple alternative discharges.
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HA uses channel cross-sectional data to create a one-dimensional hydraulic model. To run the 1-D hydraulic model, you must assign channel roughness factors for each cross-section. The channel roughness (Manning’s n) can be varied according to discharge, or set as a constant value for all discharges.The main output from the hydraulic analysis module is a time series of hydraulic parameters.
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The Time Series Analysis (TSA) module of the River Analysis Package (RAP) allows you to investigate time series. Ensure that the following plugin file is present in Source prior to opening a project:
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C:\Program Files\eWater\Source version\Plugins\Ecology.RAP.TSA.dll |
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TSA is an interpretive tool. Its input must be daily time series, as it is designed for stream flow data, but can equally be used for hydraulic time series or meteorological data. The algorithms underlying TSA are used by the Rules Based Models (RBM) module and Quantitative Models (QM) module of RAP to predict biological responses to alternate flow scenarios.
The basic time unit of TSA is daily, however sub-daily, monthly, seasonal and annual time series can also be handled by TSA. Time series must be gap-free (ie. no empty cells if viewed in a spreadsheet). As well as a visual output, TSA provides tabulated numeric output that can be saved as a comma-delimited file for input into other post processing statistical packages.
TSA calculates time-series metrics for post-processing in other statistical packages:
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See Data file formats for more information.The basic time unit of TSA is daily, however sub-daily, monthly, seasonal and annual time series can also be handled by TSA. Time series must be gap-free (ie. no empty cells if viewed in a spreadsheet). As well as a visual output, TSA provides tabulated numeric output that can be saved as a comma-delimited file for input into other post processing statistical packages.
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The Time series Manager (TSM) is a tool for manipulating, infilling, cleaning and transforming time series. It can be used to investigate time series, and apply any rating curve to create new time-series data sets. Ensure that the following plugin is present prior to opening a project in Source:
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The TSM module interacts with the other three components of RAP, and can:
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