HEC-FIA and Flood Damages Reduced

Overview

HEC-FIA (Flood Impact Analysis) is a tool used to quantify the consequences from a single flood event. HEC-FIA computes can include economic losses (losses to structures and their contents), agricultural losses, and expected life loss from these hydraulic events. A dollar value of the benefit to the nation from USACE dam and levee projects is calculated every year and published in the Annual Flood Damages Report (AFDR) to Congress. CWMS plays a vital role in the reporting of AFDR. Developments to HEC-FIA are currently focused on improving the process, functionality, and reporting options of flood damages reduced simulations in CWMS. 

Funded Activities

Accomplishments

Release HEC-FIA 3.4 (CWMS 3.4)

HEC-FIA 3.4 was released in September 2024, and will be included in the upcoming CWMS 3.4 software release. Among bug fixes, HEC-FIA 3.4 adds additional capability to the Flood Damages Reduced compute initially introduced in HEC-FIA 3.3. Within one simulation, the user can now calculate agricultural and structural Flood Damages Reduced. This improvement streamlines computations by removing the need for manual agriculture FDR computations outside of HEC-FIA.

Documentation Updates

In FY24, the HEC-FIA User's Manual was updated to include information on the new features added to HEC-FIA 3.4.

Weighted Average Allocation of Benefits (CWMS 3.5)

This effort was deferred in order to accomplish higher priorities this year.

Host Flood Damages Reduced Workshop

The first Flood Damages Reduced CWMS workshop was held on November 14-16, 2024 in Kansas City, MO. The workshop was attended by 35 water managers and economists from across USACE. Experts from HEC and the MMC Flood Damages Reduced National Team provided presentations on how to configure and set up FDR forecasts within CWMS. The majority of the workshop was set aside for district staff to work on their own CWMS Flood Damages Reduced forecast setup, with experts on hand to provide technical advice. 

Restructure and Modernize the HEC-FIA Plug-in

The HEC-FIA team invested effort to update the HEC-FIA CWMS plugin this year. The plugin was restructured to meet the CWMS Java 11 requirements and provide consistency across CWMS plugins in structure. This change also allows the HEC-FIA CWMS plugin to be released separately from HEC-FIA, allowing HEC-FIA plugin fixes to not depend on a new version of HEC-FIA. A separate plugin allows for bug fixes to be more quickly addressed and updates released to the field. 

Technology Transfer - Develop New Tutorials

New tutorials were developed during FY24 to assist districts with implementation of Flood Damages Reduced computations in their CWMS watersheds. Tutorials included How to Add Crop Data in HEC-FIA, How to Develop a Without-Levee HEC-RAS Geometry for Flood Damages Reduced Computations, and How to create Holdout HDF - Flood Damages Reduced Computation in HEC-FIA and CWMS. These tutorials are hosted on the HEC website as a part of the Annual Flood Damages Reduced SOP. 

Bug Fixes and Testing

Throughout the FY24, bugs in HEC-FIA were reported to the development team by the field. The HEC-FIA team verified and addressed issues, and included fixes with the HEC-FIA 3.4 release. Specific bugs that were addressed can be reviewed in the HEC-FIA 3.4 release notes, which track changes to the software. Before code changes were made to HEC-FIA, testing was done to ensure the change had the desired effect and did not result in unintended impacts.  

Field Support

The HEC-FIA and Flood Damages Reduced teams provided field support throughout FY24. A new initiative this year included monthly working sessions to answer field questions on Flood Damages Reduced implementation in CWMS. These sessions were well-received and will be continued next year. The team also met individually with districts to provide guidance on how to implement FDR in CWMS watersheds when requested.