The Regime Prescription Tool (HEC-RPT) is designed to facilitate entry, viewing, and documentation of flow recommendations in real-time, public settings. HEC-RPT seeks to improve 1) communications in group settings by allowing real-time recording and plotting of the recommendations as they are developed and 2) the recommendations produced by making hydrologic information more immediately accessible to scientists, engineers, and water managers during the formulation process.
HEC-RPT is primarily a visualization tool and is not intended to perform the detailed quantitative analyses (e.g., statistical analyses or reservoir and river routing) already performed by other software packages. Instead, HEC-RPT seeks to complement other software by making it easier to create flow time series that other software packages can import and use in their analyses.
HEC-RPT is the first joint software development by the Corps and The Nature Conservancy. Development costs were shared between the Hydrologic Engineering Center, Portland District, and The Nature Conservancy. This work was undertaken in support of the Sustainable Rivers Project, which is an ongoing nation-wide partnership between the Corps and The Nature Conservancy to improve the health and life of rivers by changing the operations of Corps dams, while maintaining or enhancing project benefits.
Using the software involves two main steps, defining hydrologic conditions or "states" and creating flow recommendations.
Defining Hydrologic "States"
HEC-RPT offers two methods for defining states. The first is easy. Users simply name a series of hydrologic conditions (wet, average, dry, extreme dry, etc.) and list the water years that fall into each category. The second is more complex. Users create an algorithm that imports time series (i.e., natural flow, reservoir storage, precipitation, etc.) and performs math and logic functions on those time series to determine the prevailing hydrologic state. Though this method can be tricky to set up, it is more realistic from an operational perspective where hydrologic conditions often change from day to day or week to week rather than hold for an entire water year.
Creating Flow Recommendations
Most features in HEC-RPT support the creation of flow recommendations. The main interface has text
entry fields where users can record pulse, flood, and low flows recommended by formulation teams. Two plotting windows display different aspects of the recommended flows, automatically updating with
each new entry. Existing time series can also be plotted to show how recommendations compare with natural flows or past water management.
HEC-RPT has the ability to “stand alone” as an independent program capable of accessing hydrologic data for reading, writing, and plotting data. It will also be available as an option from the Tools menu of the reservoir simulation model HEC-ResSim (version 4.0). Flow recommendations formulated in HEC-RPT can be exported to HEC-DSS and are thereby available for immediate analysis in other HEC software, including reservoir system simulation, river hydraulics, and ecosystem functions.
The User’s Manual discusses background, philosophy, and use of HEC-RPT. It is installed with the software and is available through the software’s Help menu or by downloading the PDF using the following link. HEC-RPT User's Manual (CPD-84)
The HEC-RPT Program can be downloaded HERE
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