Almost three years ago, I had the idea for SplashTool. What started as a rather rudimentary command-line program has now evolved into optimized software that is already in use at several engineering firms and one public client. I’m proud of that, and I’m happy to be able to provide added value with SplashTool in the… Continue reading 2022 – looking backwards and forward
Category: origin story
RTX 3090 performance test
Since early May, we’ve had a brand-new simulation computer equipped with an AMD Threadripper and an Nvidia RTX3090 at Dahlem Beratende Ingenieure! Naturally, one of our first actions was running a simulation with SplashTool_GPU as a performance test. First impressions: The GPU is incredibly fast! Even large areas exceeding 100 km² can be computed at… Continue reading RTX 3090 performance test
Graphical User Interface
A key step in simplifying the use of SplashTool is providing an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI). After some research, I decided to implement the GUI using the Qt framework. It offers extensive modern functionalities, platform independence, and direct integration with Python via PyQt5 and PySide2. GUI programming is completely new to me, so before… Continue reading Graphical User Interface
2020: Review and what’s coming
The year 2020 was unexpected and full of challenges for many. One of my challenges was developing SplashTool. By the end of the year, tested versions of the software for CPU and GPU are available for multiple projects, complete with documentation, example layouts, and additional resources. I’m thrilled to have created something new, but I… Continue reading 2020: Review and what’s coming
SplashTool_GPU
The speed optimizations for the CPU-based version using pure NumPy are now largely tapped out. Some optimizations could still be done with Numba, but even there, hardware constraints set the limits. NumPy’s math libraries are already heavily optimized, making the current bottleneck the reading and writing of data to and from memory. Modern GPUs have… Continue reading SplashTool_GPU
A documentation is required
SplashTool is now being used regularly within Dahlem. Furthermore, it’s being used in Kaiserslautern as a tool for area-wide analysis. Up until now, comments in the source code and brief, unsorted explanations of the algorithm have been enough for documenting the functionality. This is no longer adequate because both the underlying methodology and the application… Continue reading A documentation is required
SplashTool in Kaiserslautern
The Stadtentwässerung Kaiserslautern has decided to use SplashTool as the primary analysis tool in the ongoing project on heavy rainfall risk being conducted by Dahlem! After numerous tests with freely available data, and some uses as a supporting tool for prescreening in hydrodynamic analyses, I’m very pleased that SplashTool is being used for the first… Continue reading SplashTool in Kaiserslautern
Working on the details and git
After implementing irregular geometries using masked NumPy arrays, some maintenance work is needed. Variable names are inconsistent, and comments and docstrings for documenting the functions are missing. The code currently contains three files: The code reads georeferenced TIF files, performs the iteration according to the criteria specified by the user using optimized math libraries, and… Continue reading Working on the details and git
The case for SplashTool
While working on several dozen heavy rainfall projects, I was dissatisfied as the lead engineer and project manager with the available tools: Flow path analyses, based on classic GIS tools, have numerous methodological limitations and no longer meet the requirements for modern analyses. Hydrodynamic models, on the other hand, require numerous input data, careful model… Continue reading The case for SplashTool