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Spatial Information in Hydrology and

Water Management
Josef Frst
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Learning objectives
In this section you will learn:
Overview of commonalities in GIS technology and
hydrology to motivate for GIS use in hydrology and
water management.
Basic understanding of modelling with spatial
information
Overview of properties of spatial information in
hydrology and water management
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Outline
Introduction
Motivation
Data and information
Problems
Summary

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Introduction
Establish a relationship between problems in water
resources and the capabilities of GIS by comparison
of terms and schematic figures
Discrimination between Data and Information
Characterisation of hydrological information
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Motivation
Concordance between tasks in hydrology and water
management and functionality of GIS technology
Hydrology and water
management
GIS
The scientific study of the
properties, distribution, and
effects of water on the earth's
surface, in the soil and
underlying rocks, and in the
atmosphere
GIS is a system of hardware
and software used for storage,
retrieval, mapping, and
analysis of geographic data,
which references a
particular place on the earth
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Schematic illustration of the hydrologic cycle
In a text book of hydrology
(Bras, 1990):
The world in GIS (ESRI,
1998):
Motivation
Concordance between tasks in hydrology and water
management and functionality of GIS technology

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Hydrologisches Modell SHE (Bathurst &
OConnell, 1992):
GIS-berlagerung (Vieux, 1992):



Motivation
Concordance between tasks in hydrology and water
management and functionality of GIS technology
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Data and information
Data
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Data and information
Data + Knowledge
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Data and information
Data + Knowledge = Information
Danube
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Data and information
Data










???
part of ASCII Grid File
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Data and information
Header Information




Technical hints on format, resolution, georeference
??? What is it actually???
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Data and Information
Metadata
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Data and Information
GIS map display
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Data and Information
Cartography
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Data and information
Data + Knowledge = Information
E.g.: a sequence of coordinates describes a polyline (=
data). Knowing that this polyline represents a reach of a
river, creates knowledge of it.
The model concept determines data requirements
e.g: the unit hydrograph contains information about the
catchments reaction to rainfall, which depends on
shape, size, height, vegetation, geology, slopes, etc.,
without having to know these factor zu develop the UH
it is amodel of the catchment and has a spatial
reference
Models with distributed parameters use a spatially
distributed characterisation of catchment properties
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Data and information
Information
Hydrol. time
series
River
network
Land cover Terrain Hydro-
geology
Geometry
points lines, 2D, 3D areas
(polygons)
3D surface bodies,
volumes
Acquisition
point related,
time
dependent
ground
survey,
remote
sensing,
derived from
DEM
ground
survey, RS,
regionalisatio
n from point
and line
samples
ground
survey,
photogramme
try, RS, GPS,

boreholes,
geophysics,

Presentation
hydrographs,
maps of
monitoring
networks
maps,
longitudinal
profiles, cross
sections,
maps, areal
statistics,
3D, contours,
raster maps,
hillshading,
hypsometric
curve
raster maps,
contours,
profiles,
pseudo-3D,
fence
diagrams
Properties of spatial information in hydrology and water
resources
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Data and information
Information
Hydrol. time
series
River
network
Land cover Terrain Hydro-
geology
Model
application
Runoff,
groundwater,
flood
statistics
Hydraulics,
flood routing,
P-R, ecology,
limnology
Soil erosion,
evapotranspir
ation, GW
recharge
Distributed
H.M.,
synthetic
drainage
network, soil
erosion,
Groundwater,
soils, river
basin models,

Attributes
Quantity,
quality,
thresholds,

Discharge,
quality, ecol.
State, use,
Nominal,
ordinal,
cardinal
scales,
Terrain
elevation
Soil type,
geological
strata,
conductivity,
porosity,
Topology
Neighbour-
hood, spatio-
temporal
interpolation
Strahler order,
administrative
order,
catchment,
Neighbour-
hood,
thematic
overlays,
Aspect,
slope, flow
accumulation,

Geological
sequence,
Properties of spatial information in hydrology and water
resources
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Problems
Water resources management
Goal-oriented order of human impacts on surface and
subsurface water. Compensation of conflicts between
natural water supply and anthropogenic demands
Uses and functions
Domestic and industrial water supply, cooling water,
irrigation, flood protection, hydro power, navigation, water
quality, including sewage treatment and low flow
regulation, recreation, fishing, drainage, erosion,
sedimentation
Protection and enhancement
Natural water bodies, archeological, historical, biological
and geological resources, eco-systems, quality of water,
land and air.
GIS supports inter-disciplinarity
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Summary
Many developments in GIS technology originate from
environmental and natural sciences use of GIS in
hydrology and water management natural
Hydrologic models are based on information about
the area, for which hydrologic processes are to be
described. The model concept determines, in which
form the area characteristics are to be made available
important hydrologic information: Time series,
drainage network, land use, elevation model,
hydrogeology.
Spatial hydrologic information is basis for water
management planning, both for use and protection of
water resources and the environment