"System" is the term used to describe a subject of interest for which management alternatives will be formulated. There tends to be multiple systems within one project and there is no limit to the number of systems per project. A system may refer to a location - such as an important river reach, or to an aspect of an ecosystem associated with a water body - such as a floodplain forest community, or to a guild of creatures - such as fishes, or to different points of view for water management - such as water supply, hydropower operations, or recreation.
Each system has a “system type”. System types for “Flow” and “Elevation” are included automatically for RPT applications and cannot be edited by users. System types are comprised of a name, English and metric units, and units conversions. For example, the flow system type is named “Flow”, has English units of “cfs” (cubic feet per second), metric units of “cms” (cubic meters per second), and equations that guide conversions between units systems (e.g., metric = English * 0.028316847…). Users can create other system types for their RPT application such as water temperature (Figure 3).
