Presentation of the HortonMachine geospatial library at FOSS4G2019

1. FOSS TOOLS FORM
MODELLING NATURAL
HAZARDS
THE HORTONMACHINE LIBRARY
Silvia Franceschi, Andrea Antonello
HydroloGIS s.r.l.
FOSS4G2019 - Bucharest

2. WHO AM I?
cofounder of , small Italian engineering
company
Charter Member
environmental engineer specialized in hydrology,
hydraulics, geomorphology and forestry
PhD in Mountain Environment and Agriculture
developer of scientific models contained in the
HortonMachine library in the fields of: hydrology,
hydraulic, forestry
HydroloGIS
Osgeo

3. THE HORTONMACHINE LIBRARY
an Open Source geospatial library focused on hydro-
geomorphological analysis and environmental modeling
development started in 2002 at the University of Trento,
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

4. THE HORTONMACHINE LIBRARY
Supported over the years by the Universities of Trento (prof.
Rigon) and Bolzano (prof. Tonon) and maintained by
HydroloGIS

5. THE HORTONMACHINE LIBRARY
from 2015 it is integrated in gvSIG as SpatialToolbox: the
plugin is available through the gvSIG Update Manager
from 2018 it is available as a stand alone suite of
applications for working with GIS data

6. ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSES
The Hortonmachine suite provide tools to analyse different
environmental processes like:
extreme floods
debris flow
large wood floods
shallow landslides
vegetation and forestry analysis
meteorological data interpolation

7. MORE THAN ENVIRONMENTAL
PROCESSES
urban networks design and verification: acqueducts and
waist water (rainfall)
digital field mapping
handling geospatial data: spatial DB, raster calculator,
scripting environment

8. THE HORTONMACHINE SUITE
zip archive containing all the required dependences for
Windows and Linux
set of applications to work with environmental and
geospatial data:
spatialToolbox
dbViewer
geopaparazziViewer, gforms, SLD
geoscript, mapcalc
quickfolder, wms2geotiff

9. THE DB VIEWER

10. THE GEOPAPARAZZI VIEWER

11. THE GEOSCRIPT

12. THE GFORM

13. THE MAPCALC
 Unfortunately no documentation is available yet for
this tool.

14. THE QUICKFOLDER

15. THE SLD CREATOR

16. THE WMS2GEOTIFF

17. THE SPATIAL TOOLBOX

18. THE SPATIALTOOLBOX
The GUI Models are grouped by categories:
HortonMachine: geomorphology
analysis
Raster and vector processing
Mobile tools: support for
Geopaparazzi (digital field
mapping)
LESTO: LiDAR Empowered Science
Toolbox Open Source

19. MAXIMUM DISCHARGE
Evaluation of the maximum discharge for a given
precipitation:
a real passed event
the extreme events evaluated through the statistical
analysis of hystorical series of precipitation → the Rainfall
Intensity-Duration Curves (EU Flood Directive)

20. MAXIMUM DISCHARGE
geomorphology tools (pitfiller, flowdirections, network
extraction, …​) to extract the topographic parameters
from a DTM

21. MAXIMUM DISCHARGE
hydro-geomorphology tools to evaluate the hydrologic
and hydraulics parameters of the model (distance to
outlet, gradient of hillslopes, topographic index)

22. MAXIMUM DISCHARGE
statistical analysis of precipitation (hystorical series) to
evaluate a and n of the Rainfall Intensity-Duration-
Frequency curve (IDF curve) (geoscript console)

23. MAXIMUM DISCHARGE
Peakflow: semi-distributed hydrologic model based on
the GIUH (Geomorphologic Instantaneous Unit
Hydrograph) and the width function:
maximum discharge
the GIUH is calculated using the width function
precipitation hyetographs constant
separate superficial (saturated area) and subsuperficial
fluxes (unsaturated area)

24. MAXIMUN DISCHARGE

25. DEBRIS FLOW
Evaluate the possibility for debris flow to start along the
stream network and propagate downstream
Evaluate the possibility for debris flow to start from the
hillslopes outside the stream river, reach the river and
propagate downstream
Extract the hazard map for debris flow reacing the alluvial
fan

26. DEBRIS FLOW
DebrisTriggerCNR: identifies the triggers along the
network channels based on the Zimmermann equation
(1997)
total contributing area A
local slope S

27. DEBRIS FLOW
Shalstab: evaluates the hillslopes stability based on the
Shalstab algorithm developed by Montgomery and
Dietrich (1994)
theory of infinite slope with a simplified hydrological
model
resulting equation shows the ratio between the
contributing area and the length of the boundary in the
point
function of the soil density, the angular slope, the
friction angle, the soil transmissivity and the effective
rain

28. DEBRIS FLOW
Maps of critical precipitation and stablity of the basin

29. DEBRIS FLOW
DebrisVandre: evaluates the possibility for triggers on
hillslopes to reach the network and go downstream:
only unstable pixel can be considered as triggers
only triggers near the network can reach it (avg
distance 25-50 m)
in the path on hillslopes to the channel the material
can move unconditionally, halt over the run out
distance and cumulate the material during its path or
just halt not comulating the material, depending on
the local slope

30. DEBRIS FLOW
Shalstab + DebrisVandre: map of unstable areas in the
basin at various return times

31. DEBRIS FLOW
DebrisVandre: evaluates the run out distance of debris
flow in the network using the empirical law of Vandre
considering the local slope:
greater than 8° the movement continues
unconditionally
less than 8° the debris flow comes to a halt over the run
out distance cumulating/not comulating the material
during its path

32. DEBRIS FLOW
Map of triggers and paths

33. DEBRIS FLOW
DebrisFlow: bases on TopRunDF (Sheidl and Rickenmann
2009) it predicts the repository and the amount of
sediment deposition on the torrential fan:
input parameters: debris flow volume, mobility
coefficient, starting point of deposition, DTM of the
area
simple D8 algorithm and individual flow path following
the steepest decrescent
Monte Carlo iteration number to simulate lateral
spreading of the flow area: individual flow path is
based on a random outflow direction

34. DEBRIS FLOW

35. USE CASE:
the 29th of October 2018 Dimaro got hit by 400-500mm of
rain in 2 days (usually 800mm yearly). Previous
catastrophic events were 1882 with 230mm in two days
and 1966 with 180mm

36. USE CASE:

37. USE CASE:

38. USE CASE:

39. USE CASE:

40. USE CASE:
the hazard mapping has been done 7 years before using
the Hortonmachine tools
the map calculated with a 200 years Tr estimates more
than 70000 m^3 of material reaching the alluvial fan

41. USE CASE:

42. USE CASE:
The post event simulation with DebrisFlow tool

43. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
GIS-based set of tools for predicting the magnitude of LW
transport during flood events at any given section within
a river basin
two main processes related to woody debris:
LW recruitment: from hillslopes and from bank erosion
(geology)
LW transport/propagation along the network

44. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
Step by step procedure split in submodules

45. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
bank erosion: the pre-event conditions correspond to
bankfull width (flow event that recurs every 1.5 year)
hillslopes input:
evaluates the presence of vegetation on hillslopes
(single tree approach from LiDAR data)
extracts the unstable and connected areas shallow
landslides on connected areas deliver logs to the
channels
extracts the vegetation on the unstable and connected
area

46. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
Total LW recruitment in each section: hillslopes

47. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
Total LW recruitment in each section: hillslopes + bank
erosion

48. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
Propagation downstream: LW is routed downstream
using simple Boolean transport conditions based on:
ratio between the length of the logs and the width of
the sections (input parameter)
ratio between the diameter of the logs and the water
depth (input parameter)
post-event channel width + water depth are calculated
through the 1D hydraulic model using the peak
discharge

49. LARGE WOOD FLOODS
Identification of the critical sections for the transit of LW in
the given stream network

50. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
Homepage:
Download site:
http://www.hortonmachine.org/
https://github.com/TheHortonMachine/hortonmachine/releases/tag/horto
0.9.6
silvia.franceschi@hydrologis.com