TXDOT’S RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION OFFICE
RESEARCH SUPERVISOR SEMI-ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT
Fiscal Year
Date of This Report
February 28, 2002
Period Covered by This Report
Project Title
Project Number
0-4193
RMC
3
September 1, 2001 – February 28, 2002
Regional Characteristics of Unit Hydrographs
Research Supervisor
Researcher
Researcher
Researcher
Project Start Date
1.
2002
Name
Agency
Phone
Fax
David Thompson
William Asquith
Xing Fang
Ted Cleveland
Texas Tech
USGS
Lamar
University of
Houston
806-742-3485
512 927-3580
409-880-2287
713-743-4280
806-742-3449
512 927-3580
409-880-8121
713 743-4260
September 1, 2000
Approved End Date
Email
thompson@shelob.ce.ttu.edu
wasquith@usgs.gov
fangxu@lamar.edu
cleveland@uh.edu
August 31, 2003
REQUESTED CHANGES FOR POSSIBLE PROJECT MODIFICATION
Project Duration: Additional time is not yet required, but USGS could not begin project work in FY
2001 because financial agreement was not completed until end of March. Seven months of the 2001
fiscal year were lost. As a result, an extension may be required. This will be determined in FY
2003.
Project Personnel: Because of late financial agreement coupled with restrictions on hiring with the
administration turnover in Washington, USGS has not been able to hire an additional surface water
researcher during FY 2001. This is considered a set back, but hopes are high on an early hire in
FY2002.
Funding Needs: For university researchers, current funding is adequate. For USGS, current
cumulative funding levels for the project remain appropriate. However, in 2001 only about half
budget was spent towards research on this project, the remainder was returned to TxDOT.
Work Plan: No changes to work plan.
Deliverables Table: No changes from previous semi-annual report.
2.
PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT INFORMATION
See Exhibit A.
RTI Form Date 1/18/02
3.
EQUIPMENT
No equipment purchased.
PROGRESS TO DATE, BY TASK

Task 1 – Literature Review. The literature review is complete. A report is in the draft
stage and will be delivered on or about 1March2002. A list of the literature reviewed was
provided to the PAC and selected papers were distributed at PAC request.

Task 2 – Data Assembly. During the first six months of FY2002, the USGS (Mr. Asquith)
over saw the final stages of the data entry into the databases for projects 2104, 4193, and
4194. The database was deemed complete during the middle of February 2002. An array of
file verification programs was developed. The most important of these programs is the socalled concomitant_hydros_hyetos.pl program. This program computes 5-minute interval
paired cumulative hyetographs and hydrographs from the separate files of rainfall and runoff.
This program is known to successfully operate on all 1,636 storm-events.
A summary of the storm events with incremental data for the 4193 and 4194 projects is listed
below.
1636 storms
Austin
Dallas
Fort Worth
San Antonio
Small Rural Sheds
401
240
194
192
609
Data file summary for project 4194.
The so-called "rain*.dat" files:
77422 lines of header, labels, and data
665757 words
7443964 characters
Data file summary for project 4193.
The so-called "unit*.dat" files:
91082 lines of header, labels, and data
686788 words
8277480 characters
A summary of the storm totals for the 2104 project, which are a super-set of the storm count
for projects 4193 and 4194 is listed below.
Austin
BroaderNetwork
Dallas
Fort Worth
San Antonio
SmallRuralSheds
367
828
230
196
215
1088
-----2924
#
#
#
#
#
#
increment value based
daily value based totals
increment
increment
increment
increment
# total
Thus, the research team has 2,924 storm totals on which to perform investigations on.
RTI Form Date 1/18/02
The entire database is structured into 5 data groups or modules under and file versioning
system on a Texas Tech Linux computer. The entire database is then mirrored into multiple
hard drives for the research staff. The official backup is in Mr. Asquith's Solaris workspace
in Austin and is backed to tape nightly. Vault storage of USGS backup is made regularly.
Mr. Asquith has completed a first draft of a paper on sample L-moment application using
hydrograph data sets and is about half way done with a paper deriving an L-moment
application on "Nash" model cumulative hydrograph distributions.
4.

Task 3 – Data Analysis. Exploratory work is ongoing at this time. Researchers are working
on a variety of approaches for developing unit hydrographs from Texas data. University of
Houston is working on a linear programming approach and has a working program that is in
the testing phase. Texas Tech is developing a tool to compute unit hydrographs using a
matrix inversion approach. Also, Tech researchers are scanning the San Antonio data and
computing unit hydrographs using a simple spreadsheet computation (plus matrix inversion
using a spreadsheet). Lamar is working on both the linear programming and matrix
inversion approaches to computation of unit hydrographs.

Task 4 – Comparison with NRCS synthetic unitgraphs. No activity on this task yet.

Task 5 – Regionalization of resulting unitgraphs. No activity on this task yet.
PROGRESS ON DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENTLY APPROVED “PRODUCT”
DELIVERABLES
No change.
5.
MEETINGS/CONFERENCES
A working 0-4193/0-4194-project meeting was held on 17Dec01. TxDOT personnel present at that
meeting included George Herrmann. The remainder of the PAC was unable to attend because of
other engagements. All project personnel, Will Asquith, David Thompson, Xing Fang, and Ted
Cleveland were present. Watersheds for researchers to work on were assigned. Results of the
literature review were presented and discussed, as was work-in-progress by the various researchers
on developing unit hydrographs from respective watersheds. Plans were made for work to be done
in the next quarter. Will Asquith taught a tutorial session on use of the database and manipulating
utilities.
6.
POSSIBLE CANDIDATES FOR FORMAL PRESENTATIONS AT THE UPCOMING RMC
MEETING
Presentation is not appropriate for the June RMC meeting, but it is likely that preliminary results can
be presented at the November RMC meeting.
7.
MISCELLANEOUS
Projects 2104, 4193, and 4194 are linked by the use of a common database. Therefore, progress on
these two projects will be linked until generation of the database is complete. At that time, probably
end of FY 2002, the projects may diverge as researchers pursue solution of each problem.
RTI Form Date 1/18/02