OptiDamTool

About

OptiDamTool is a Python package designed for analytics and decision-making in dam management. Conceptualized and released on May 29, 2025, the package offers tools for modeling and analyzing hydrological flow across a network of connected dams.

Leveraging functionalities from the open-source GeoAnalyze package, OptiDamTool provides classes that that assist users in preparing inputs for simulating water erosion and sediment transport, and supports decision-making in dam network deployment aimed at environmental sustainability.

Classes

OptiDamTool.WatemSedem

Provides tools to prepare inputs for the WaTEM/SEDEM model, which simulates soil erosion, sediment transport capacity, and sediment delivery to stream networks at the watershed scale. While this class includes built-in methods for generating most required inputs, it is still recommended to consult the GeoAnalyze documentation for any geospatial operations not covered by its methods.

• Convert Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data into the stream files required for the WaTEM/SEDEM model with the river routing = 1 extension enabled.
• Extend input rasters beyond the model region and fills NoData cells with valid values, as WaTEM/SEDEM does not support NoData.
• Perform reprojection, clipping, resolution rescaling, and reclassification of rasters.
• Processe open-source Esri land cover data.
• Generate a land management factor raster from land cover inputs.
• Compute the product of soil erodibility and rainfall erosivity factors.
• Convert raster files to the Idrisi raster format, with the .rst file extension.
• Generate effective upstream drainage area polygons for selected dam locations within a stream network.

OptiDamTool.Network

Offers methods for establishing hydrological and sedimentation flow connectivity between dams using the stream network.

• Identify connectivity between adjacent upstream and downstream dams.
• Compute the controlled upstream drainage areas for selected dam locations within a stream network.
• Estimate sediment inflow to dams based on controlled upstream drainage areas.
• Simulate storage dynamics of individual dams in a system due to sedimentation, using a mass balance approach.
• Generate updated dam location points and their corresponding controlled drainage polygons when dams become inactive during system-wide storage dynamics simulation.

OptiDamTool.Analysis

Provides methods for analyzing simulation outputs and generating insights.

• Integrate sediment delivery to stream segments.
• Generate stream shapefiles with comprehensive information of each segment's drainage area and sediment input.
• Summarize total sediment dynamics for the model region.
• Assign a Coordinate Reference System and the default GTiff driver to output Idrisi raster files from a WaTEM/SEDEM simulation.

OptiDamTool.SystemDesign

Provides methods for optimizing dam systems within a watershed using a multi-objective evolutionary computation framework.

• For a fixed number of dams, it determines optimal locations and storage capacities based on annual sediment inflows along watershed drainage pathways.
• Retrieve detailed simulation results for a selected solution scenario.

OptiDamTool.Visual

Provides methods for visualizing simulation outputs.

• Produces a figure showing sediment inflow percentages to stream segments, relative to the total sediment input across all stream segments.

• Creates a figure showing dam locations along the stream path.

• Produces a figure showing dam system-level statistics, including controlled drainage area, remaining storage, sediment trapped, and sediment released.

• Displays figures illustrating the annual variability of key features for each dam in the system:

  • Controlled drainage area: Percentage of the drainage area managed by each dam, relative to the total stream drainage area, evaluated at the start of the simulation year.
  • Remaining storage: Percentage of storage capacity remaining relative to the dam’s initial storage, evaluated at the start of the simulation year.
  • Trap efficiency: Efficiency of sediment trapping expressed as a percentage, evaluated at the start of the simulation year.
  • Trapped sediment: Percentage of sediment retained by the dam, relative to the total sediment input across all stream segments, evaluated at the end of the simulation year.

• Generates Pareto front visualizations to support the analysis of multi-objective optimization results, including parallel coordinate plots and two-dimensional trade-off projections.

The examples below show typical outputs produced by these visualization methods:

Installation

To install, use pip:

pip install OptiDamTool

Quickstart

A brief example of how to start:

import OptiDamTool
watem_sedem = OptiDamTool.WatemSedem()
network = OptiDamTool.Network()

Documentation

For detailed information, see the documentation.

Support

If this project has been helpful and you'd like to contribute to its development, consider sponsoring with a coffee! Support will help maintain, improve, and expand this open-source project, ensuring continued valuable tools for the community.