[Qgis-community-team] QGIS plugin for catchment analysis and modelling using PIHM

[Alister Hood]

Hi everyone,
I just want to let you know about a QGIS plugin for integrated catchment
modelling.  Some of you may have seen it already, but it seems to be
sort of languishing in obscurity.  I didn't see any mention of it in the
normal QGIS community places; only in a number of academic papers.

It originally comes from here:
http://www.pihm.psu.edu/pihmgis_home.html
Their binary and source packages are both very messy and include a very
old version of QGIS, and the source package for some reason isn't the
latest version of the plugin.
I *think* the original authors may have abandoned the QGIS plugin in
favour of a web-based system.
However, there is a public fork of the latest version here, including a
windows and a linux binary:
https://github.com/mlt/PIHM/wiki
I guess he must have contacted the authors to obtain the source.  He has
cleaned up the file tree and done some fixes, including so that it
builds with msvc, and doesn't violate the GPL.  (I wish I'd found this
earlier, because I started doing the same thing...)

The plugin provides terrain analysis features similar to the TauDEM
plugin for Mapwindow and ArcGIS (but without the fully automatic mode):
pit removal, stream network and watershed delineation, etc.  
It also runs the "Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model", and can
produce a number of time series and spatial plots of the results.

I recommend using the tutorial (and sample data) available on the web
site:
http://www.pihm.psu.edu/pihmgis_documents.html
The built-in help documentation is the same, but is missing the
pictures!
This might also be useful:
http://www.pihm.psu.edu/Downloads/Doc/pihm_input_file_format.pdf

There are a number of interesting papers which mention it, and often
have a short description of QGIS itself, e.g.:

Community Hydrologic Model: Structure
http://cuahsi.org/chymp/thurs/RMaxwell.ppt
Multiphysics Modeling Implications for Environmental Observatories
http://cuahsi.org/chymp/wed-am/CDuffy.pdf
Model-Data Integration Framework: Watershed Reanalysis at the
Susquehanna - Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory
http://www.cuahsi.org/chymp/20110315/Presentation_CHyMP_2011_GBhatt_mode
ldata.pdf
An Object Oriented Shared Data Model for GIS and Distributed Hydrologic
Models
http://www.personal.psu.edu/muk139/KumarEtAl_DataModel_IJGIS.pdf
The Role of Physical, Numerical and Data Coupling in a Mesoscale
Watershed Model
http://www.personal.psu.edu/muk139/Mukesh_PIHM_Dec01_2009.pdf

And this one doesn't mention it, but I know there are some people here
interested in parallelization ;) :
Domain Partitioning for Implementation of Large Scale Integrated
Hydrologic Models on Parallel Processors
http://www.personal.psu.edu/muk139/Mukesh_DP_Dec01_2009.pdf

Regards,
Alister