Integration of Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) Model with Geographical Information System (GIS) Platform and Its Applications

Abstract

Data management and analysis are important for the application of water quality modeling in water environmental protection. The integration of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) model with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is discussed in this paper. The data management and analysis ability of this widely used water quality model was enhanced by the integration. Database methods are used to integrate the different types of modeling data into a GIS platform. The spatial data modeling and analysis capacity of GIS is used in the pre-processing and post-processing of EFDC. The integration application is demonstrated by a case study of the Lower Charles River Basin water quality model, which was built with EFDC and has 56 varying-size curvilinear horizontal grids and 8 vertical layers. The case study shows that the integrated system significantly improved the application of EFDC with more efficient data processing, organization and analysis, and can be used as a powerful tool for water environmental management and decision making.