This flooding risk module is intended to help educators demonstrate some basic physics of why rivers flood. A computer code with a fully interactive graphical user interface module (GUI) is interacted with alongside worksheets designed for students of varying ages.
This readme file provides an overview of the installation and setup process, as well as a brief description of the module worksheets available.
This repository is also linked into the SedEdu suite of education modules, and can be accessed there as well.
A Matlab version of this module exists here.
Visit the section of the text below for more information on installing and executing the flooding_in_deltas program on your computer.
This module depends on Python3, and the libraries numpy and matplotlib.
It is recommended that you install Anaconda, which is an open source distribution of Python. It comes with many basic scientific libraries, some of which are used in the module. Anaconda can be downloaded at https://www.anaconda.com/download/ for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Please follow the instruction provided in the website as to how to install and setup Python on your computer.
If you want a more flexible and lightweight Python distribution, you can use whatever your favorite package manager is distributing (e.g., homebrew or apt), check the Windows downloads here, or compile from source.
Whatever method you choose, you will need to install the dependencies. installation by pip is easiest, and probably supported if you used anything but compiling from source.
You can download this entire repository as a .zip by clicking the "Clone or download button on this page", or by clicking here to get a .zip folder. Unzip the folder in your preferred location.
If you have installed git and are comfortable working with it, you can simply clone the repository to your preferred location.
git clone https://github.com/amoodie/flooding_in_deltas.git
Run the module by command line, with
python3 <path-to-the-repo-folder>/src/backwater_flooding.py
Worksheets are being written to accompany the GUI module. The aim of the worksheets is to help guide a discussion about flooding on deltas or rivers, as may be discussed in Earth Science courses. The modules currently available are targeted at specific age groups:
- High School Earth Science -- 9th to 12th graders
Educators: please let me know if you used this module, and if there are any ways you can see for us to help facilitate this sort of module in the future. Your feedback is very much appreciated. Email to Andrew Moodie, amoodie@rice.edu.
The module was created by Andrew J. Moodie as part of an National Science Foundation funded research project assessing the sustainability of anthropogenically influenced deltas. The research is supported by Grant No. 1427262 and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to A.J.M. under Grant No. 1450681. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. For more information, please visit http://www.coastalsustainability.rice.edu/outreach/.