DHSVM

Everything on this page dates to 2008 and earlier. You will not need it if you get Current version of DHSVM

DHSVM createstreamnetwork additions

This page contains several changes to the createstreamnetwork.aml package for DHSVM data preparation. I wrote parts of the initial package, but never took responsibility for it, nor understood it completely. As I have recently been preparing data sets and communicating on the dhsvm listserv, I found it necessary to make some changes.

First some background. Any good geographical information system like ARC/INFO can calculate the flow direction of water across the landscape, sum the contributing area of each cell (weighting by rainfall, if desired), and declare cells above a certain flow level to be streams. Often, though, the DEM fails to represent the hydrography adequately, and user imposes a mapped stream network. I make mapped streams work by calculating the area that flows into each stream segment and to sum those areas as they flow downstream. As this process was extremely clumsy in the ARC/INFO environment, I reversed-engineered the Arc Attribute Table as a java object. (This might be the first ESRI object ever written.)

The old version converts every grid cell to a polygon, clips the stream to to polygons, and transfers attributes. This can take a very long time.

I am submitting changes in four components of the createstreamnetwork package:

roadelevation.aml: Minor changes speed execution and prevent crashes in instances when the selection set is empty.
rowcolmap.aml: The original version created a polygon for every grid cell. This version creates polygons only for cells on or near the river. It also indexes the info files before doing relates. The result is much faster execution.
The java program AddAat2 is replaced by AddAatf. It takes the cell size as an argument. It also treat the maxmsq and meanmsq variables as floating point, preventing integer overflow when areas exceed 2147 square km. (For those not familiar with java, source code is AddAatf.java. It is compiled with the "javac" command to AddAatf.class . The same .class file will run on any machine with a java runtime environment.)
createstreamnetwork.aml: maxmsq and meanmsq variables are defined as floating point, and calls are made to AddAatf.class The variable "local" is defined as a cobol-style 4-digit integer. This can cause non-fatal (but real) errors when a 5-digit raster value cannot be assigned to a stream segment. I changed "local" to "b", a 4-byte integer, and did the same for the variable wshd.

These changes improve the speed and accuracy of the package without making it any easier to use. Visualization is weak, and error messages scroll by unseen. Arc Macro Language and the (black window) command line are very old, and do not support newer data structures. I'm sure others can compile a long list of problems. I would always suggest the following integrity check:

/* areacheck.aml, if want to put it in a file.
/* Run this as a file or cut-and-paste at the Grid: prompt
&describe mask /* loading info into variables
&set cellarea = [calc %grd$dx% * %grd$dy%]
&ty [delete tmpa -info]   /* Delete scratch file
statistics streamnet  arc # tmpa;max maxmsq;end  /* place area into tmpa
&ty Max stream area is [listunique tmpa -info MAX-MAXMSQ] square meters,
&ty or [calc [listunique tmpa -info MAX-MAXMSQ] / %cellarea%] cells
&ty The mask is [listunique mask.vat -info count] cells.
&ty [delete tmpa -info]   /* Delete scratch file

Harvey Greenberg
hgreeness49@gmail.com
University of Washington
Department of Earth and Space Sciences
Box 351310
Seattle WA 98195-1310