Technical Manual enables Water Balance Model users to "follow the numbers"
WBM Technical Manual
The British Columbia Inter-Governmental Partnership (BCIGP) and the Alberta Low Impact Development Partnership (ALIDP) have announced completion of the online Water Balance Model Technical Manual. To view it, click on http://www.waterbalance.ca/technical_manual/
Funding for manual development was provided by ALIDP and the Regional Adaptation Collaborative program. The latter is a federal/provincial initiative that is addressing the impacts posed by a changing climate.
A Highly Navigable Online Resource
“The Water Balance Model Technical Manual is structured to meet the information needs of technical audiences and provides technical descriptions of methods and formats used to gather inputs, transfer those inputs to the QUALHYMO modeling engine and display results within the Water Balance Model application,” explains Ted van der Gulik, BCIGP Chair.
“The manual is a highly navigable online text organized in a manner that allows the user to understand a variety of aspects of the Water Balance Model in varying degrees of detail. The user can drill down into data variables, equations and other components of the system.”
“The Table of Contents on the left of the screen provides a listing of the major sections of the document. Hyperlinks throughout the document allow users to move to inter-related items of detail both within and outside the technical manual.”
Date Mapping: ‘Follow the Numbers’
“The value of the Water Balance Model as a decision support tool resides in its ability to graph and report the differences between pre-development, post-development and mitigation scenarios for the modeled area,” continues Richard Boase, BCIGP Co-Chair.
“In addition to the ability to model small (site), medium (development) and large (watershed) land masses, the simulation is performed with historically accurate climate data that spans a multi-decade period, recorded in hourly time steps.”
“The community of Water Balance Model users had been asking for a technical manual that documents the intelligent WBM interface that translates user information into data used by the QUALHYMO engine. The lens for manual development was the engineering user who wants to follow the numbers from the WBM interface keystroke to the QUALHYMO file. In a nutshell, it is all about data mapping.”
To Learn More:
To read an earlier story posted on Water Bucket that provides context for the decision to develop the manual, click on Inter-Provincial Partnership develops Technical Manual to meet information needs of Water Balance Model users.
Feedback Loop for Manual Evaluation & Adaptive Enhancement
“Both the BCIGP and ALIDP have asked local government partners and paying subscribers to provide ‘users perspectives’, both in terms of their first impressions and subsequent detailed evaluation of the online WBM Technical Manual,” states Kim Stephens, Program Coordinator for the Water Sustainability Action Plan for British Columbia.
“The detailed evaluation will continue until the end of August 2010. After that, the WBM leadership will determine whether and what additional enhancements may be necessary and/or desirable. This feedback loop underscores the critically important role that the user community plays in driving WBM development.”
“The Water Balance Model is one of the ‘twin engines’ driving the outreach and continuing education program implemented under the Action Plan umbrella to achieve green infrastructure and water sustainability outcomes desired by local governments. The other engine is the Water Bucket website.”
To Learn More:
To understand the role of the Water Balance Model in supporting the ‘design with nature’ policy framework that the Province of British Columbia has put in place, click on Beyond the Guidebook 2010: Implementing a New Culture for Urban Watershed Protection and Restoration in British Columbia.
Feedback from Local Government Partners
“I was very impressed with the readability and ease of navigation throughout the document,” states Ramin Seifi, Director of the Community Development Division, Township of Langley.
“Extremely user friendly and very engaging. Clean, elegant, science made easy,” comments Peter Andzans, Manager of Community Sustainability, City of Abbotsford.
“The manual is a comprehensive document!,” states Sarah Howie, Engineering Department, Municipality of Delta. “I like the graphics and the tables – they synthesize the information well….it will likely be a useful tool to search for answers to specific questions about the model. I think the TOC side-bar on the left is really helpful and would be the first place that people will looks for answers.”
Model Framework
The figure below is a modeled image of a drainage area which displays the components that users define during the configuration of scenario. It serves as a framework to understand the relationship of the drainage area parameter details.
