Introduction

GIS for Natural Resource

Management:
Urban Drainage Planning

Urban area is highly dynamic

Flood is one of the major problems in most of urban area
Encroachments of natural drainage
g p
path by
y
-Construction of buildings
-Construction of roads
-improper placement of bridges/culverts
Therefore urban drainage planning is very important to ensure that
flood water are not hindering economic activities

Geoinformatics Center, AIT

Mini-Projects 2009-2010

Hydrological Cycle
Thirsk, North Yorkshire, UK

Thailand-Bangkok

Flood devastation in
northern Thailand

Urban flood in Tokyo, Japan

Water flow Characteristic

Drainage Network
Direction of Flow

Surface characteristics determine flow.

Flow will be in steepest down slope direction.
Direction of flow leads to determine how many cells
flow into any given cell (Accumulation of flow)

Surface

Leads to drainage network

Accumulation

Drainage System
Shape of surface:
-determines water flow
-change in area that affects the flow
-is useful to predict the effect of altering the
landscape
-is well-represented by digital elevation model (DEM)
Drainage system consists of:
-area depended on water falls, and
-stream networks where flows to outlet.

Using GIS
In urban area, natural flow paths are interrupted
due to human interventions such as construction of
roads landfill
roads,
landfill, building
building, and encroachment etc
etc.
GIS is a powerful tool to,
- Create terrain data: elevation, surface
- Easily generate the drainage network
- Evaluate the effects of urban interventions on
drainage pattern
- Spatial analysis

Set of hydrological information

TIN Triangular Irregular Network

TIN Data structure

TIN
DEM (Grid conversion)
Flow direction
Fill
Watershed
Drainage network

is a vector based representation of a surface as a set of contiguous, non-overlapping triangles, or sea

bottom, made up from irregularly distributed nodes and lines with three dimensional coordinate x,y,z
values and a series of edges joining these points to form triangles.
Each triangular facet describes the behavior of a portion of the tins surface.

TIN

DEM Digital Elevation Model

is a raster representation of a continuous surface, usually
referencing the surface of the earth
Surface
interpolation

is surface interpolation of grid

DEM

is represented by equally spaced reference points

each mesh point of DEM represents a value on the surface
only at center of the grid (contains z-value)

Flow Direction

Flow Direction

Basis of most all GIS hydrological analysis

Once flow direction is known it is possible to determine
how many cells flow into a given cell
Basis of watershed delineation and stream networking
There are eight valid output direction related to the eight adjacent cells
into with flow could travel

32

How flow direction is determined

16
8

Eight
g
Directions

64 128
1
4

128 128

32

Code for eight

directions

Flow
Direction

Flow Direction

Finding the direction of steepest decent, or maximum drop

The steepest descent cell is coded with the value representing that
direction

2
2

Sink

Flow direction

A sink is a cell or set of spatially connected cells whose flow direction cannot be assigned
one of the eight valid values in a flow direction grid. This can occur when all neighboring
cells are higher than the processing cell, or when two cells flow into each other creating

Flow direction & Elevation

p
a two-cell loop.

An area surrounded by higher elevation values

Known as pit/depression

Pit

Area of internal drainage

Should know morphology of area
40

42

27

26

32

35

30

30

25

38

32

38

40 20

37

38

40 20

27

35

30
32
37

Natural flow

40

42

32

35

30

25

38

35

Sink

Sink
Sink/Pit

Flow Accumulation

Flow direction & Elevation

Flow direction & Flow Accumulation

Trace backwards up the flow direction grid and determine

the number of cells flowing into each cell
Accumulated flow is the number of cells flowing into each cell
Generate a grid to represent the total number of cells flowing into each
cell
Cells that have high accumulation are designated as stream channels
1

1
1

4
1

6
6

Sink

11

6
9

25

Flow Accumulation

How flow accumulation is determined

Calculating accumulated flow as the accumulated weight
of all cells flowing into each down-slope cell in the output
grid.

Flow Direction

6
7

4 14

Flow Accumulation

There are 35 cells flow into this cell

Flow Accumulation/ Stream network

Detailed Calculation

Flow_dir

Flow_acc

Flow_acc

Flow_acc

Flow_acc

Flow_acc

Flow_acc

Value = 47

Drainage network: A Case study of

Methodology

Torrington watershed in Colombo, Sri Lanka

1. Study of Drainage Paths of the watershed
without any road construction intervention

Objectives
1. Identification of the drainage needed
locations due to road network construction.

2. Study of the change of Drainage pattern after the

construction of roads
3. Identification of suitable culvert/bridge locations

2.Study of drainage pattern for structure and

location assessment.

Watershed Delineation Processes in ArcGIS

1. Add Data & Exploring

Add Data
Contour, Road, Spot_H
St
Stream,
Boundary
B
d

2. Open & Check attribute tables

4. Edit TIN

3. Create TIN

NOTE: Dialog box options of Create TIN command

Height source Specify what field is used to provide height values for the theme.
All feature types except Mass Point and Replace Polygon can be added without heights.
The value <none> can be used for representing features like area boundaries.
Input as Specify what surface feature type the theme will be added as. If you have a point
theme as input the only surface feature type option will be Mass Points. If it is line theme the
options will be Mass Points and Hard and Soft Breakline types. If it is polygon theme the options
will be Mass Points, Hard and Soft Breaklines, Hard and Soft Replace, Erase, Value Fill, and
Clip Polygon types.
You can tag line and polygon surface features as either hard or soft. Hard features are things like
roads streams
roads,
streams, and shorelines which represent continuity in the slope of surface.
surface Soft features are
features that do not alter the local slope like ridgelines on rolling hills. To demonstrate, the ridges do
not represent distinct breaks in the slope but they do separate watershed that you might want to have in
in the triangulation.
A study area boundary is a good example of input as a soft (clip) feature. The boundary may have no
significance in defining the surface morphology yet you need it maintained in the triangulation
to exclude subsequent analysis like interpolation from occurring outside its boundary.

NOTE: Surface feature types

Output from Edit TIN

Any feature used in the triangulation process must be incorporated as a particular kind of surfacefeature type.
Mass point - individual points are entered into the triangulation process as nodes to the
triangulation.
Breakline - linear features are maintained in the triangulation as a sequence of one
or more triangle edges. There are two types of breaklines. If there are both of breaklines in the
same file, it might be necessary to create two different generate files for each kind of breakline.

- Add TIN Data again to display Colors

Replace polygon sets the boundary and all interior heights will be the same values (are assigned
one constant value, for example, lakes). It is maintained in the triangulation as a sequence of one
or more triangle edges.
Erase polygon - polygonal features are maintained in the triangulation as a sequence of one or
more triangle
i l edges.
d
Input data
d that
h falls
f ll within
i hi the
h erase polygon
l
are excluded
l d d from
f
model
d l
interpolation. Analytic operations such as volume calculation, contouring, and interpolation will
ignore these areas. It is used to define the flat areas.
Clip polygon - polygonal features are maintained in the triangulation as a sequence of one or more
triangle edges. Input data falling outside polygonal features are excluded from model interpolation.
Fill polygon - are assigned an integer value to areas within fill polygons, as known as tagging a
surface.

5. Add TIN data

6. Convert TIN to raster (DEM)

7. Enhance DEM color

9. Generate Flow Direction with filled DEM

8. Fill DEM

10. Generate Flow Accumulation

10

11. Classify value of stream

12.Define condition of stream raster

Note: Threshold is the way to separate or classify 2 groups of data value

which threshold should define a proper value as a break value.

13.Create Stream Link

14.Generate Stream to Feature

11

15. Save project and Create New project

16. Add road and open attribute table

Apply Select by Attribute

RD_ID = 1

17. Switch selection and add 0 value outside of road

18. Convert road polygon into Raster (Grid)

For outside road keep it as 0

Then Save and Stop Editing table

12

19.Combine Road_grid VS DEM

20.Create Flow Direction to DEM+Road

21. Find Sinks of Flow Direction of DEM+Road

22. Overlay with data layers

13

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