CRWR-Flood Map, a set of ArcView tools for hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, is one of the products of the research project System of GIS-Based Hydrologic and Hydraulic Applications for Highway Engineering awarded to the University of Texas at Austin by TxDOT from 1996 to 1999. CRWR-Flood Map consists of two modules: CRWR-PrePro, developed by the Center for Research in Water Resources (CRWR) of the University of Texas at Austin, and HEC's GEO-RAS. CRWR-PrePro serves as a link between digital spatial data and HEC-HMS (for hydrologic analysis), and GEO-RAS a link between digital spatial data and HEC-RAS (for hydraulic analysis).
After implementing CRWR-Flood Map at Castleman Creek (in McLennan County, Texas) and Pecan Bayou (in Brown County, Texas), it became evident that some assumptions used in the study needed to be further investigated. These assumptions include those made for calculating lag time for the watershed unit hydrograph and the method used for mapping floodplains in-between cross-sections where digital terrain models of an inadequate resolution had to be used. A complete study of these areas by David James Anderson titled GIS-Based Hydrologic and Hydraulic Modeling for Floodplain Delineation at Highway River Crossings can be found on the CRWR Webpage.
Work on this new phase of the project began on Friday, February 9, 2001. A this point the researchers discussed the principal points to be investigated in the initial phase of the project. TxDOT's interest at this moment is to determine the cause of the discrepancies encountered between parameters calculated with CRWR-PrePro and those calculated by TxDOT.
Research documents, including the final report, can be found here.