Time of Travel Beta Application
The Time of Travel Beta Application was built in cooperation with the Inland Oil Spill Preparedness Program. The primary goal of the application is to provide rapid estimates of instream travel times for emergency spill response scenarios.
The Time of Travel Beta Application also provides mean reach velocities and general travel time estimates that also can be used by other water resource managers. The application estimates travel times based on equations from Harvey Jobson’s Water-Resources Investigations Report 96–4013 providing maximum probable and most probable predictions through a set of two tools, the Spill Planning tool and the Spill Response tool. Both tools offer the user tabled accumulated travel times for the leading edge, trailing edge, and peak of the spill for every reach segment in a selected study area. Additionally, the Spill Response tool provides the peak concentration for each reach segment.
The Spill Response tool was designed for use in the event of a spill. This tool traces a specified distance downstream from a user-selected point. With this tool the user-selected point will be the location of the spill whether it be over land or directly into a water feature and the distance will be the distance from the spill location to an intake or gage of interest. After the trace is completed, the user is asked to input a spill mass, recovery ratio (optional), and discharge. Travel times and a peak concentration are then computed for each reach and the travel times are accumulated in the downstream direction. This tool also offers a line chart depicting travel times for the leading edge, peak, and trailing edge for each reach in the study area. For large study areas a user may select a reach group to reduce the number of reaches shown in the chart for better visibility.
The Spill Planning tool was designed for emergency response personnel to plan ahead of a potential spill. The tool traces a specified distance upstream from a user-selected point. With this tool the user-selected point is often an intake of interest. After the trace is completed, the user is asked to input a discharge value which is input into Jobson’s equations and the results are presented as a colorized display of accumulated travel times for each reach in relation to the click-point/intake.
Results are available in a final printable report with options to include a map of the study area, tables with both accumulated maximum probable and most probable travel times, a line chart, a custom title, optional notes, and the citation for WRI 96-4013. Within the report the user also has the option to export table content to a CSV file or download spatial data as a GeoJSON file.