WMS:Gages - Visualizing Data

One of the most important steps in any modeling problem is calibration. During the calibration phase, an attempt is made to model a set of conditions which have been known to exist at a site and for which measured data (surface depth, infiltration) are available. The geometry, resolution, and input parameters of the model are adjusted until the output computed by the model is reasonably close to the measured data.

The calibration stage can be the most tedious and time-consuming portion of the modeling process. In order to make the calibration stage more efficient, a set of tools for managing gages has been provided in WMS. A "gage" is an xyz point defined by the user representing a location where field data has been collected (e.g., a gaging station) or simply a point of interest in the model. Once a set of gages has been defined, whenever a transient data set is imported to WMS to a grid, the data set is interpolated to each gage and a curve is drawn in the Hydrograph window representing the variation of the data set with time at each gage. The plot can be customized to include any combination of gages and data sets. Field data can be imported from text files and plotted for comparison with computed curves.

Gages and gage plots are supported only in the 2D Grid module.