RIBASIM

River Basin Planning and Management

RIBASIM (River Basin Simulation Model) is a generic model package for analyzing the behaviour of river basins under various hydrological conditions. The model package is a comprehensive and flexible tool which links the hydrological water inputs at various locations with the specific water-users in the basin.

RIBASIM enables the user to evaluate a variety of measures related to infrastructure, operational and demand management and the results in terms of water quantity and water quality. RIBASIM generates water distribution patterns and provides a basis for detailed water quality and sedimentation analyses in river reaches and reservoirs. It provides a source analysis, giving insight in the water's origin at any location of the basin. RIBASIM follows a structured approach to river basin planning and management.

RIBASIM is a modelling instrument for river basin planning and management. It has a set of outstanding features which make it a state of the art river basin simulation package. The model has been applied for more than 20 years in alarge number of countries and in a wide variety of projects. Water management organizations world-wide use it to support their management and planning activities. Large and complex river basins have been modelled and simulated with RIBASIM. Separately modelled sub-basins can be combined into one main-basin.

RIBASIM has a link with the HYMOS hydrological database and modelling system. For detailed water quality process RIBASIM can be linked with the DELWAQ water quality model.

field of application

RIBASIM is designed for any analysis which requires the water balance of a basin to be simulated. The resulting waterbalance provides the basic information on the available

quantity of water as well as the composition of the flow at every location and any time in the river basin.

RIBASIM provides the means to prepare such balances in required detail, taking into account drainage from agriculture, discharges from industry and the downstream re-use of water. A number of basin performance parameters are generated for evaluation of the simulated situations.

A recent application of RIBASIM is the use of the model as flow routing component within a Flood Early Warning System (FEWS). Various hydrologic routing methods are available in RIBASIM e.g. Manning formula, Flow-level relation, 2-layered multi segmented Muskingum formula, Puls method and Laurenson non-linear “lag and route” method. The flow routing is executed on daily basis starting at any selected day for any number of days ahead.

user interface

The structure of RIBASIM is based on an integrated framework with a user-friendly, graphically, GIS-oriented interface. Working with RIBASIM means applying a structured approach to river basin planning and management.

This structured approach forms the basis for the working environment. The working environment provides:

• guidance of the user at the design, calculation (simulation) and the analysis phase

• GIS environment for the interactive preparation of the basin schematization, the entry of object attribute data and the evaluation of simulation results.

RIBASIM features

working environment

delft GIS

water users

reservoir operation

groundwater

water management options

hydro-power

hydrologic routing

basin performance

source analysis