| Digitalisation
Right: Figure 2. Map depicting the Punjnad Dam within the Indus River basin in Pakistan, along with its upstream dam network. The map also includes the surface water flow direction for each spatial grid of the river basin shown as a specific color, illustrating water flow patterns and connectivity
classroom. The tool can help design field experiments to monitor and track sediment transport, explore fish migration in regulated rivers, to name a few.
Introducing DamNet Driven by the need to develop a visualisation tool
that reimagines dams as hubs and transit points, we hereby present “DamNet”. DamNet uses a network theory algorithm to identify geolocated dams that are upstream or downstream of a given dam for a given flow path. In the current version of the tool, the network algorithm has already been applied to a classic dam database of GRanD (Global Reservoirs and Dams database) containing 7000 dams [11].
The network
algorithm used was part of a Reservoir Operations driven River Regulation (ResORR) model [12]
. However,
the network algorithm has the functionality to allow user to provide their own dam database and flow direction file or river network. DamNet can accessed from here – https://depts.
washington.edu/saswe/damnet/ and when user hovers a mouse over a dam, there are options for identifying dams downstream or upstream. At each dam location, key information about the dam emerges in the visualization.
Visualisation tool The DamNet visualisation tool is developed using an
Observable Notebook, an interactive and editable document format ideal for data visualisation [14]
. This
notebook allows for the creation of visualisations that can be embedded in a website. The interactive visualisation itself is built using a network graph, written in JavaScript with the d3 library [15]
.
Users can select a specific continent or choose ‘All Continents’ to view dams in their region of interest (Figure 4). When hovering over a dam, the tool highlights immediate upstream dams in red and the immediate downstream dam in green, while the selected dam is displayed in yellow. The dam’s name and the river it is built on are shown in the lower right corner (Figure 5). Clicking on a dam reveals the entire network associated with it, displaying all upstream and downstream dams relative to the selected dam (Figure 6). The color scheme – red for upstream dams, yellow for the selected dam, and green for downstream dams – mirrors the flow of traffic at an intersection, with red indicating incoming flow, yellow for the point of inspection, and green for outgoing flow. Additionally, flow direction edges are represented by a gradient blue color, where the shade deepens as water flows from multiple upstream dams towards a downstream dam.
Stewardship There is a myriad of explorations that one can do
with DamNet, especially if the user uses a more comprehensive dam database (for example GDAT and GOODD) [16 and 17]
with more detailed and high-
resolution flow direction data from the world’s rivers (example, GRWL and SWORD dataset) [18 and 19]
.
www.waterpowermagazine.com | November 2024 | 27
Above: Figure 3. Map depicting the Punjnad Dam within the Indus River basin in Pakistan, along with its downstream dam network overlaid on the flow direction grid for the river basin
Below: Figure 4. Screenshot of the DamNet visualisation tool displaying the dam network across the North American continent. Dams are indicated by black markers, with connections represented as directional edges (from light blue to dark blue). [See https://
depts.washington.edu/saswe/damnet]
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