"Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO" integrates the site with the watershed and the stream

The vision for the Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO... as a decision support tool that bridges engineering and planning... is that it will help communities
create neighbourhoods that integrate both good planning and innovative engineering designs, for overall objectives of greater sustainability, such as:

• minimal environmental impacts,
• enhanced social values,
• economic stability, and
• recreational opportunities.

The Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO is a web-based tool that underpins Beyond the Guidebook: The New Business As Usual, a provincial initiative to advance implementation of green infrastructure policies and practices throughout British Columbia. The mantra for this provincial initiative is: Today's Expectations are Tomorrow"s Standards.

The desired outcomes of the program which led to the Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO encompass not only the computational capabilities of the tool, but extend to promoting improved land use planning practices and to influence the greening of the built environment.

A Fully Integrated Tool

Two rainfall-runoff simulation models have been merged to create a tool that integrates the site with the stream and watershed:

• The Water Balance Model for British Columbia decision support tool was developed in 2003 by an Inter-Governmental Partnership as an extension of Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for British Columbia;
• The QUALHYMO (QUALity HYdrologic MOdel) continuous hydrologic simulation model  was developed in the early 1980s by Dr. Charles Rowney for the Ontario Ministry of Environment, and is the tool of choice by experts in Ontario and Alberta; and
• The new Water Balance Model is a decision support tool that integrates the powerful continuous hydrologic simulation capabilities of QUALHYMO with the built-in suite of land use, low impact system, and soil and local climate information, while providing a standardized presentation of calculation results.

At the heart of the Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO is a pragmaticStream Health Methodology which picks up where others left off in the 1990s; and incorporates the understanding gained, and the lessons learned, from experience over the past decade.

The QUALHYMO model is the hydrologic calculation engine that will provide consistent delivery of reliable results; the decision support tool will manage data so that users and reviewers can compare multiple development and land use scenarios. The significant benefit of the new Water Balance Model is the resulting emphasis on strategy and alternative implementation methodologies, as well as the focus on a multitude of design details available to achieve the desired objectives.

The desired outcome in creating the Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO is that it will be a place to get dependable answers, a place where efficient and secure access to data, tools and methods is consolidated on an agreed common platform.  Rather than expending effort re-inventing calculation methods and chasing routine data, stakeholders will focus on developing the results they seek in an accessible, flexible and proven environment that has been delivered with the features they have specified.  This tool is the professional computational and communication backbone that will take us towards the sustainable reality of a greening of the built environment.

Posted February 2008