The HEC-MetVue HMR52 analysis tool is a plugin extension to the HEC-MetVue program. It is designed to allow the development of design storms, Probable Maximum Storms (PMPs), that conform to the NOAA Hydrometeorological Report (HMR) 51 https://www.weather.gov/media/owp/hdsc_documents/PMP/HMR51.pdf and HMR 52 https://www.weather.gov/media/owp/hdsc_documents/PMP/HMR52.pdf. The results produced by this software have been compared against the original HEC-HMR52 http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/publications/ComputerProgramDocumentation/HMR52_UsersManual_(CPD-46).pdf
and HEC-HMS computer programs on multiple basins to verify its correctness.
Currently, for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) determinations and studies, HEC-HMS is the required software for developing the PMP and resulting PMF. HEC-HMS contains an HMR 52 precipitation method that allows the modeler to enter the storm characteristics. During a simulation in HEC-HMS, the program will intersect the elliptical PMP storm with the subbasin polygons to compute basin average hyetographs. HEC-HMS also contains an option to optimize the HMR 52 storm characteristics, area, orientation, and centroid coordinates, to maximize peak flow, volume, and reservoir stage at any point of interest in a basin model. The HEC-MetVue HMR52 plugin can be useful to assist the modeler in visualizing the PMP storm and in estimating initial storm characteristics to be used in an HEC-HMS model.
Additionally, HEC-MetVue and HEC-HMS can be used together to visualize and optimize the PMP in HEC-MetVue and optimize the PMF in HEC-HMS, as the HMR 52 storm characteristics from HEC-MetVue can be defined as inputs for the HEC-HMS meteorologic model. The use of both HEC-MetVue and HEC-HMS in this case would require several interactive trials by (manually or automatically) varying the storm center's location and storm orientation in HEC-MetVue and then testing the PMP variations in HEC-HMS (refer to the HEC-HMS Users Manual) in order to yield maximized peak flow and reservoir stage for the site of interest. Trial PMP computations are very fast in HEC-MetVue, which also provides very convenient and visual tools for moving the center of the storm center and changing its orientation. Most often, for fairly symmetric basins, the optimal storm center placement is pretty close to the basin centroid. Typical storm placement trials to be executed in HEC-MetVue range between the basin centroid and location of the site of interest, such as a reservoir or basin outlet.
As an optional component of the HEC-MetVue program, the HMR52 plugin can be disabled by users who do not need to perform HMR52 design storm analysis. The ability to load only the plugin(s) needed by the user minimizes the memory required to run HEC-MetVue.