Water Resource Associates
A network of consultants in water resources, water quality, hydrology, hydrogeology and flooding.
Infilling of missing artificial influence data
Flow in a river has a natural component and an artificial component. This project is concerned with estimating the artificial component when it is not measured. This is of importance when naturalising observed flow records.
Background
Flow in a river has a natural component and may have one or more artificial components. The development of an environmentally sound method of managing that river requires a detailed quantitative knowledge of both natural and artificial components and their variation over time. In many cases data on the artificial component are available and held by the Environment Agency; in some cases the data are not measured and in others they are measured but the Agency has no right of access to them.
Typical scenario
Scope of work by Water Resource Associates Ltd
In recent years the agency has developed guidelines of how to account for the artificial component of flow in rivers (naturalisation). This project is solely concerned with developing methods of estimating these data when measurements are not available. During the project the team has visited every region of the EA in England and the EA Wales to discover what types of data are the most problematic. It has also developed a data base which includes data which are normally measured, data which are often measured but which were measured for specific cases and other types of data which are readily available and could be expected to be correlated with artificial components of flow.
The photograph to the left shows two specific types of problem. In the foreground are pipes used for de watering a construction site. The pumped discharge will have an immediate effect on the flow of the receiving watercourse and a longer term effect on groundwater. In the background is a power station whose use of cooling water varies as a function of the demand for electricity
Results
The study provided a set of methods which can be used by Environment Agency staff to estimate the values of missing artificial influence data, for hydrological simulation and naturalisation of streamflow.