From industry articles and product reviews, to online postings and more, civil engineers across the world are talking about our engineering software products and the time-savings they provide.

Here, in our office, we do lots of floodplain studies to design and evaluate flood-control structures. We’ve used RiverCAD extensively for those areas for close to 10 years. If you put enough cross sections close together, you start to get a pretty good picture of the river’s profile. So if you have a tool like RiverCAD that makes it easier to extract the required data, such as the elevation models, contours and topologies, you can put more cross sections together. That’s a very time-consuming thing to do by hand.

As its name aptly implies, this is a CAD program concerned with rivers. BOSS International is the name of the company in Wisconsin that produces it. Its main purpose is to facilitate the analysis of natural run-off conditions over an area of terrain, including stream flow volumes and their routes, and to model impounding areas. Analyzing stream flows is a vital precursor to designing road work embankments, culverts and bridges, and of course dams. Since RiverCAD works from terrain data in 3D computer model form it follows that it is relatively simple to modify the terrain as might be proposed for some structures or earth works and be able to analyze the resulting modified flow or impounding conditions.

I have reviewed and ran parallel computations with other programs using BOSS International’s StormNET version 4.7 and found it to be accurate and fast and certainly equal or better than other programs in common use in this area. It is certainly acceptably for use on any projects submitted for review in Nassau County.

To evaluate new flow conditions and the extent of the floodplain after regrading of the land surface, the authors performed surface water flow modeling to delineate 2-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-year flood events using both the pre- and post- restoration topography. Procedures used for the modeling are described in this paper.

In answer to your inquiry regarding hydrologic software; the South Florida Water Management District has not established a process where proprietary software is evaluated and subsequently endorsed or otherwise generally deemed acceptable for use in the Environmental Resource Permit program. Determining the appropriate use of any modeling tool used to design and analyze a water management system proposed in an Environmental Resource Permit application is the responsibility of the particular State of Florida registered professional engineer. It is that individual engineers’ responsibility to select the hydrologic software program that will provide the results commensurate with the intended objective.

The past number of years within the state has seen an overhaul and generally a betterment of the Irish construction industry towards sustainable development; in the context of RiverCAD this includes assessing impacts and formulating mediating measures against the impacts on rivers and catchments. The effects of development on an existing watercourse are now routinely requested as part of requests for further information during development planning.

Mohave County Flood Control District has been using your BOSS RiverCAD program since 2007 and found it to be accurate and fast. It is certainly acceptable for use on any project submitted for review to the Mohave County Public Works Department.

The City of Tucson Transportation Engineering Floodplain has used BOSS RiverCAD XP and found it acceptable in modeling riverine systems in the City of Tucson.

StormNET is approved by the City of Grand Junction for stormwater and wastewater modeling and design. All hydrology computations/modeling and design of storm drainage systems shall be performed in accordance with the Mesa Country/City of Grand Junction Stormwater Management Manual, latest edition.

We carefully considered your request for approval of StormNET Model by Development Approvals, Water Resources.

We decided to accept the stormwater report based on StormNET model analysis.

The StormNET model will be tested through City IT group. Once the StormNET passes the test, we will formally accept this model and put this model into our manual on next manual update.

The Environmental and Engineering Services Department (EESD) has reviewed the information provided by BOSS International with regards to the StormNET Software. Based on this literature, the StormNET Software is based upon the latest version of the USEPA SWMM stormwater and wastewater model.

The City of London currently accepts USEPA SWMM based modeling for all capital and development project hydraulic modeling applications. The City of London will accept StormNET based modeling which has been converted to XPSWMM modeling files for stormwater hydraulic modeling applications for both capital and development led projects.

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the use of BOSS International’s StormNET software. StormNET was evaluated by our program and approved for use in December 2007. It is approved for performing hydrologic calculations to meet the regulatory requirements of the Delaware Sediment & Stormwater Regulations for both the NRCS Standard Dimensionless Unit Hydrograph as well as the Delmarva Unit Hydrograph, including reservoir and reach routing. If you or any of your prospective customers have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me.

The City of Ramsey has reviewed BOSS International's StormNET and found it to be accurate and fast. We have used it for modeling city projects and will accept the use of StormNET for modeling of any project submitted for review in The City of Ramsey, Minnesota.

I have reviewed your RiverCAD software and found it to be accurate and fast. It is certainly acceptable for use on any project submitted for review in the State of Montana.

With regard to the above urban runoff modeling software, I confirm that we have evaluated it and are satisfied that the software's SWMM5-based analysis and reporting format would be acceptable to us by consultants employed on Cape Town City Council stormwater projects where SWMM5-based modeling is specified.

FEMA Memorandum "Policy for Accepting GIS Tools for Flood Hazard Mapping in the NFIP," dated August 27, 2001, includes RiverCAD and StormNET computer software as acceptable for use in the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) flood hazard mapping program. As discussed in Category 1 of the FEMA Memorandum, RiverCAD and StormNET can function independently from computer models already on the accepted models list as pre-processing and post-processing automation tools, and are acceptable.

Based on our last sub-committee meeting, we are going to propose changes to the Engineering Design Standards that will allow engineers to use and submit design data from modeling software of their choice for private development. For City funded drainage studies and projects, we will require the engineers to submit their drainage designs in a data file that is able to be imported into XP-SWMM. We have verified that StormNET has the capability to export their models in a SWMM format file. We have indicated to those consultants we have talked to that we feel StormNET is an acceptable modeling software for both private and public projects.

Attached is the section of our Storm Water Manual addressing storm water runoff design methodology. Acceptable design methodologies for storm water management include the Modified Rational Method, SCS Tabular Hydrograph, SCS Graphical Peak and Unit Hydrograph. Software capable of utilizing these design methodologies is acceptable to this office.

ConnDOT will accept the use of StormNET for ConnDOT projects with the following disclaimer: The ConnDOT Hydraulics and Drainage section does not endorse any particular software product or company, nor do we thoroughly review and test every aspect of the software. It is the responsibility of the user of the software to review the software's capabilities prior to selection and to ensure that it is applied in a manner such that the calculations being performed comply with the criteria and methodologies of the ConnDOT Drainage Manual. The overall use of default input values and generic output report formats in the programs will not be accepted. Coefficients, rainfall intensities, junction loss procedures, etc. shall be consistent the Drainage Manual. Output tables and reports shall be customized to match the forms published in the Drainage Manual. ConnDOT reserves the right to reject any previously accepted software at any time that is found inconsistent with the Drainage Manual or is improperly used. Acceptance of software by ConnDOT shall not be construed as an official endorsement or used in product advertising.