Updated editions and new manuals for the Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP), a computer modeling system that simulates river and reservoir systems and assesses water availability under specified alternative sets of conditions, were recently added to the Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI) website.
Dr. Ralph Wurbs, senior professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University, created the original WRAP in the 1990s as a TWRI research project and has since continually expanded the generalized modeling system under the auspices of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and other agencies.
The TCEQ Water Availability Modeling (WAM) System consists of WRAP along with input datasets for Texas’ 23 river basins. TCEQ staff and permit applicants, or their consultants, apply the modeling system in the water rights permitting process.
The Texas Water Development Board and regional planning groups employ the WRAP/WAM system in regional and statewide planning. River authorities use the modeling system for operational planning studies. WRAP has also been used in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Section 404 permit program, many university research studies and other water management endeavors in Texas and worldwide.
The various improvements in the latest version of WRAP include full integration of the USACE Hydrologic Engineering Center Data Storage System. The routinely applied WRAP is based on a monthly computational time step. New daily modeling capabilities documented by the latest editions of the manuals include flow disaggregation, routing, forecasting, reservoir flood control operations and all components of the 80th Texas Legislature Senate Bill 3 environmental flow standards, including high flow pulses. The new daily features of WRAP are motivated primarily by Senate Bill 3 requirements to integrate environmental flow standards in water management and water availability modeling.
The following WRAP manuals can be downloaded:
TR-255 12th Edition Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) Modeling System Reference Manual
TR-256 12th Edition Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) Modeling System Users Manual
TR-283 9th Edition Fundamentals of Water Availability Modeling with WRAP
TR-430 3rd Edition Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) Daily Modeling System
TR-431 3rd Edition Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) River System Hydrology
For more Conservation Matters news about Wurbs, see Meet a scientist: Ralph Wurbs and Wurbs receives inaugural American Academy of Water Resources Engineers research award.