BOSS HEC-2 is easy to learn and use. Menus, help screens, and professional documentation provide a comfortable user interface for both new and advanced PC users. Data input is performed through easy-to-use data entry screens with descriptive prompts. This intuitive user interface (along with its underlying database engine and expert system) is generations ahead of existing editors which require the user to struggle with cumbersome, cryptic, error-prone input card files.

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As you enter data, and just prior to the data analysis, BOSS HEC-2 automatically checks your data for errors via BOSS ADVISOR™, an integrated expert system. If the ADVISOR encounters an error in your input data, it will explain what is wrong and how you can correct it. BOSS ADVISOR can be thought of as an expert HEC-2 user looking over your shoulder, pointing out any mistakes made as you build your model.

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BOSS HEC-2 displays several graphs, including original and overlaid encroached cross-section plots, rating curves, water surface profile plots, overlaid profile summary plots, and 3-D river valley plots, allowing you to quickly evaluate the program’s results. The user can select all or just some of the graphs for output and let the software print the selected graphs one after another. In addition, cross-sections can be viewed graphically during data entry, allowing the user to quickly examine a cross-section’s geometry for input errors.

BOSS HEC-2 includes the BOSS DIG™ (Device Independent Graphics) driver which allows the graphs to be printed on any supported laser printer, plotter, or dot-matrix printer. Or the graphs may be exported in any of several common graphic file formats, allowing you to import these graphs into many different CAD systems and word processors. The BOSS DIG driver also supports over 150 different display adapters, allowing you to view the graphs at the maximum resolution your display hardware supports.

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Wherever you are in BOSS HEC-2, extensive context-sensitive help is available to assist you through any difficulty. And with over 700 pages of professional documentation, including illustrations, and completely described and worked out example problems, you can be productive immediately—even if you are a beginner.

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BOSS HEC-2, based on the industry-standard Corps of Engineers HEC-2 program, is the most advanced water surface profile program available for steady, gradually varied channel flow. Both subcritical and supercritical profiles can be computed. The program can account for backwater created by bridges, culverts, weirs, and other floodplain structures. The program can be used to evaluate floodway encroachments, identify flood hazard zones, manage floodplains, and design and evaluate channel improvements. Up to 14 water surface profiles with different discharges or initial water surface elevations can be analyzed at one time. The initial water surface elevations for each profile can be specified by the engineer, or they can be computed by the program. Multiple profiles can be shown plotted together, allowing the engineer to quickly compare profiles.

The program allows Manning’s roughness coefficients to be varied in either horizontal or vertical directions. Most coefficients and computational control parameters are automatically assigned reasonable default values by the program, and generally do not need to be specified by the user. Also, the program assumes that data not specified for a particular cross-section is identical to the data of the previous cross-section. This propagation of missing data eliminates having to repetitively specify data that remains constant from section to section.

Channel split flows (streamflow that diverges and then returns further downstream) can be modeled by the program. Split flows are created by islands; overtopping of a weir, levee, or watershed divide; and by diversion structures. The program can also model single or multiple circular and box culverts using the newly developed FHWA special culvert option.

Channel improvements and floodway encroachments can be entered by the user to determine the change in water surface elevation. If desired, the user can specify the allowable change in water surface elevation, and the program will then compute the extent of the floodway encroachment. This is used to determine the allowable amount of encroachment that can be made to the existing floodway without adversely altering the water surface elevation.

The BOSS HEC-2 database engine allows any entered cross-section to be used as a template for defining new cross-sections. This vastly shortens the time required to enter a large model by allowing the user to define characteristic template cross-sections. These template cross-sections can then be quickly propagated up and downstream. Modifications to a template generated cross-section are easily made to take care of special conditions that may occur at a specific location. Also, the program simultaneously supports both imperial and metric (SI) units which allows the user to switch from one unit of measurement to the other at any time. For extra-large models, a 400 ground point per cross-section version of the program is available.

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