Delineation of bridges and culverts Watersheds (advanced problems)

[FernandoVasconcellos]

Hi all!

After a long pathway, I obtained the synthetic drainage lines of my study area, quite well defined. I intersected them with a roads layer and found about 3,000 consistently defined drainage points. I also have the catchments and the adjoint catchment well defined at the drainage lines joints. But I need to delineate the watersheds for each culvert or bridge.  When I try to use "Delineate from multiple I and O" the ArcMap simply stops responding. I think the "Batch watershed delineation" would be a better function for my purpose, but I can't find a way to automatically generate the 3,000 batch points I have (actually I'm working in a small mask, with 150 pilot points).  Even when I use the tool/button "Batch point generation" to manually define just 1 of the 150 points I have, the "batchdone" field gets a "-1", what means that the delineation has failed (with no explanation why that or any clue in the ArcHydro to help to solve the problem). DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO DELINEATE THE WATERSHEDS TO PREDETERMINED POINTS (THOUSANDS OF THEM)? I'd appreciate any help at all!!!

[PeterWilson · Accepted solution]

Hi Fernando 🙂

Hi all!

After a long pathway, I obtained the synthetic drainage lines of my study area, quite well defined. I intersected them with a roads layer and found about 3,000 consistently defined drainage points. I also have the catchments and the adjoint catchment well defined at the drainage lines joints. But I need to delineate the watersheds for each culvert or bridge.  When I try to use "Delineate from multiple I and O" the ArcMap simply stops responding. I think the "Batch watershed delineation" would be a better function for my purpose, but I can't find a way to automatically generate the 3,000 batch points I have (actually I'm working in a small mask, with 150 pilot points).  Even when I use the tool/button "Batch point generation" to manually define just 1 of the 150 points I have, the "batchdone" field gets a "-1", what means that the delineation has failed (with no explanation why that or any clue in the ArcHydro to help to solve the problem). DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO DELINEATE THE WATERSHEDS TO PREDETERMINED POINTS (THOUSANDS OF THEM)? I'd appreciate any help at all!!!

I know exactly where you are comming from. I had the same problem generating multiple BatchPoints for two railway alignment designs that I was working on. I have good news and that is I have a solution\work around for you. There is currently no tool within the ArcToolbox under Arc Hydro that will create the BatchPoint Feature Class. I've copied the schema from a previous Arc Hydro model and have used it to append the point features that I want to use as BatchPoints. I've attached a zipped folder that contains a ArcHydro Geodatabase with the Feature Dataset and BatchPoint Feature Class within it. You will need to adjust the spatial reference before you can use it and then append your point features (Append Tool) into the empty Feature Class. Youll then be able to run Batch Watershed Processing.

Regards

[FernandoVasconcellos]

Thank you Peter!

I've got some suggestions but I will try your schema, as it looks to be a simple and efficient way to do what I need. I'm glad your experience confirms that I'm not taking fool conclusions, but actually reaching the state of art limits. Thank you for sharing this with me, I appreciate that!

[PeterWilson]

Pleasure Fernando

Thank you Peter!

I've got some suggestions but I will try your schema, as it looks to be a simple and efficient way to do what I need. I'm glad your experience confirms that I'm not taking fool conclusions, but actually reaching the state of art limits. Thank you for sharing this with me, I appreciate that!

Once I've completed my model, I'll post a copy of the model for you to have a look at.

Regards

[LornaMurison]

Go into Watershed Processing>Data Management Watershed Delineation.  Set the batch points to your drainage line/roads intersection points (make sure they are singlepart).  Once you exit the menu all the necessary fields will be automatically added to your points file and you can use it for batch watershed delineation.

[FernandoVasconcellos]

Thank you Lorna!

I've solved this problem today, thinking at some suggestions (Peter Wilson, South Africa, and Mark Boucher, California) and combining them.  I created a BatchPoints layer drawing just 1 point, then I used the "append" function to add the points from the roads X hydrography layer (after a day or two trying many many possible ways to use "cut and paste" buttons, which wouldn't work!)  Then I edited the necessary parameters and run the "Batch Watershed delineation". Not much different from what you suggested, right? Well, it's amazing that even having a top configuration of hardware (which I bought 6 months ago, having this ArcGIS project requirements as my main concern), I almost failed!! The ArcHydro changed from "non responding" to "thinking" dozens of times and took 10 to 15 minutes doing that to delineated the 144 basins I needed. Unfortunatelly, this is a small part of the area I'm studying (only 5%) and I'm afraid the size of the area will be a serious challenge to ArcGIS tools, even with the version 10 resources intended to deal with this problem (and even if I had NASA computers to work in this project!) Anyway, I appreciate your help very much! I put this same message in this "ArcHydro forum", the "Hydro forum" and the "Spatial Analyst forum", and each of them gave me just one, but as you can see, very helpful answers.  The fora is the main way we have to find good help, when colleagues like you take time to help others. I don't know if advanced users like you would agree, but I find very FRUSTRATING the incomplete and unhelpful "help" ESRI provides with this software. I've done 40 hours of online training and already know dozens of pages of the "desktop help" by heart, but I still can't answer some basic questions. I can't help thinking that ESRI sells a product which is a great tool, with a great potential, but with a very poor documentation and support. Unfortunatelly, business looks much more important than science for them, even with the help of the University of Texas. Well, thank you very much once more!

[LornaMurison]

Hi Fernando,
Batch Watershed Delineation does often take a long time.  I've found that I have to leave it overnight to run and that I can't have it run more than around 400 points at a time.  This number might be different for you depending on your system resources.  And I've also found that the help documentation for ArcHydro is severely lacking.