9/23/05

INTRODUCTION TO HEC-HMS:

A COMPUTER MODEL FOR RAINFALL-RUNOFF MODELING

Objectives of this class:

1) To demonstrate rainfall-runoff modeling in HEC-HMS and learn how the land
components of the hydrologic cycle are represented on a watershed scale.
2) To learn how to implement HEC-HMS for a simple rainfall-runoff modeling
exercise for a watershed.

Steps:
1) Go to the HEC-HMS website at:
http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-hms/hechms-hechms.html

2) Click on HEC-HMS under the Download button on your left hand side. This
will take you to a page where you need to download the HEC-HMS version 2.22
3) Download hms222single.exe in your local PC. This is a self-extracting setup file
that will install HEC-HMS once you double click on it.
4) Install HEC-HMS in your specified folder (say HEC-HMS) and restart.
5) Now run your HEC-HMS. It will open a window as follows:

FIGURE 1
6) The HEC-HMS that you have installed already has the necessary hydrologic and
watershed data and parameter files to run a rainfall-runoff modeling scenario for a

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 watershed. The watershed is called Little River near Tifton, GA. This is a
research watershed maintained by ARS (Agricultural Research Service) and
USDA (US Dept. of Agriculture). For more details on the watershed you may
refer to: http://sacs.cpes.peachnet.edu/sewrl/LittleRiver/littleriver.htm
7) You will now see three different items in each column that define the rainfall-
runoff modeling for HEC-HMS: a) Under Basin Model, you have Tifton this
item contains all the necessary hydrologic data of the river basin (such as
parameters for infiltration, surface runoff, area of watershed, soils type etc.). The
name Tifton is arbitrary as for your own specific problem and watershed you
can have your own name; b) Under Meteorologic Model, you have Tifton
Hyetograph this item contains all the necessary files for meteorologic input to
the modeling process mainly the rainfall file; c) Under Control Specifications
you have the item that controls how you will simulate the rainfall runoff process,
mainly your timestep and the total time period for simulation.
8) Now click on Tifton under Basin Model. This opens a new window that
graphically represents the watershed as a landscape unit for simulation of rainfall-
runoff process.

FIGURE 2
9) Essentially, all the major watershed hydrologic processes are represented by the
green box, even though you do see the actual watershed delineation with the river

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 network. NOTE: It is only a conceptualization and it DOES NOT mean that the
processes are physically taking place there. Basically the green box represents the
average watershed processes, whence the ensuing runoff as overland flow is
routed via the river network to the basin outlet. Again, the river network is also
idealized as a straight pipeline for transporting the generated runoff from rainfall.
Finally, you have a blue junction symbol at the basin outlet that basically
indicates. Lets not worry about what the junction actually means at this stage
other than representing a typical weir type structure to measure observed flow
draining out of the basin.
10) Now right click on the green box for watershed process and then click edit. This
will open a window where you can decide on the specific submodels/techniques
to solve/represent the hydrologic sub processes (e.g. infiltration, groundwater
flow, ET, river flow etc.). You also assign the watershed area here (in this case, it
is 19.27 mile 2)

FIGURE 3

11) The Loss Rate is used to represent Infiltration; Transform represents how the
surface runoff or direct runoff will reach the river network from the upstream hills
and the Baseflow represents the groundwater flow process. You can click on

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 any of these links to modify the parameters or input needed to model the
processes.
12) Make sure you are still on the Loss Rate page and notice carefully how the
current model setup for Tifton is configured. The infiltration is being modeled by
a method called SMA (Soil Moisture Accounting). But you can actually change it
to say, Green and Ampt or the NRCS (in this case, SCS) curve number method. I
want you to play with these links and connect what you see to what you have
learned so far in class (focus mainly on Green and Ampt and SCS method for
infiltration). We shall ignore Base Flow Method and Transform for the time
being.
13) Running the Model: First you need to click on Control Specifications (Jan 1
Jun 30, 1970) to define your timestep and total period of simulation. The default
configuration is Jan 1- Jun 30, at hourly timestep. Next, click on Simulate (on
the window that is generated when you click on the Basin Model (see figure 2).
Therein, click on Run Configuration. Select all the items you see i) Basin
Model ii) Met Model id and iii) Control id; Give the Run any number you want.

FIGURE 4
Now click on Compute Run under Simulate. Your configured HEC HMS model
should run to complete the rainfall runoff simulation from Jan 1 to Jun 30

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14) Viewing/analyzing Model output: Right click on the green box to view results
for the watershed processes (e.g. infiltration pattern in time, baseflow in time etc.).
You can also click on the basin outlet blue box (junction) to view results for the
outflow hydrograph. Please play around a little bit to find out how you can actually
save the output data in text format to do your required analyses.