PIHMgis is a “tightly-coupled” GIS interface to Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM). It is open source, platform independent and extensible. The tight coupling between GIS and the model is achieved by developing a shared data-model and hydrologic-model data structure. PIHMgis demonstrates an integration methodology for an open source GIS framework and a integrated hydrologic model that enables users to take advantage of object oriented computer programming (OOP) to provide more direct access to the GIS data structure to better support efficient query and data transfer between the hydrologic model and GIS.
The data structure has been designed to be flexible for modification and customization of the model or GIS, rich enough to represent complex user defined spatial relations and extensible to add more software tools as need be. The “tightly-coupled” integrated GIS interface to Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM) has been created in the Open Source Quantum GIS.
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