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MoRPHED Tutorial

To begin

We assume you have already installed the Delft3D hydraulic model on your machine. If you have not yet done so follow the directions here.

Navigate to the MoRPHED code repository on GitHub and go to the releases section of the repository. Find the most recent release and download the installer (it will have the extension '.exe').

Run the installer. You will simply need to specify a directory where the download will occur. The installer will unpack all the necessary files to the specified directory. 

Setting the Path Variable

Now you should have all the necessary files installed to run MoRPHED. There is one last step before we can run the model. We need to tell the machine where the Delft3D executable files are located. 

Go to the computer properties (for Windows 7/8: Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables). In the System Variables window find the 'Path' or 'PATH' variable and add the full path to the deltares_hydro.exe and d3d_qp.exe files. These should be located in your Delft3D install directory in the flow and quickplot folders of the the w32 subdirectory. For example, C:\delft3d\w32\flow\bin\deltares_hydro.exe. 

Now you are ready to run the MoRPHED model. 


Setup and Run the Simulation

  1. Download and extract the provided sample data (*.zip). This folder contains the directions from this webpage, a DEM (Feshie2003_DEM.tif), and an input file (Feshie0304_Hydro.txt).
  2. Launch the MoRPHED GUI. To do this navigate to the directory of your MoRPHED installation and run the MoRPHED_GUI.exe file. 
  3. Select File > New Project. Navigate to, or create, a directory where the modeling project will be located. Click OK. You will notice the directory now contains a file with the directory name and a '.morph' extension. This is an XML file that contains all the settings for your project. You will also notice the 'Inputs' and 'Delft3D Parameters' buttons in the GUI have now become active.
  4. Click the Inputs button. For the 'Inital DEM' add the file Feshie2003_DEM.tif. For the 'Input .txt' add the file Feshie0304_Hydro.txt. At this point the graph should automatically update, showing the date and discharge of each entry in the input file. If it does not click the 'Show/Update Graph' button. For sediment import select the 'Proportion of exported' option and click OK. You will notice the 'MoRPHED Parameters' button is now active. 
  5. Click the MoRPHED Parameters button. As a start, for both Path Length Distributions set the' Distribution Length' at 210. Select the 'Gaussian' option. Set 'Mu' to 125 and 'Sigma' to 40. Now click the 'Update Plots' button and you will see the distribution for sediment deposition. Set the 'Slope Threshold' to 7.0, 'Shear Stress Threshold' to 50.0, 'Area Threshold' to 30.0, 'Bed Erosion Scaling Factor' to 0.5, and 'Grain Size' to 0.05. Click OK. These are parameters we have found to work well on this modeling site, but feel free to experiment with the settings.
  6. Click the Delft3D Parameters button. For the 'Delft3D Path' navigate to the directory of your Delft3D installation (e.g. C:\delft3d). For the 'Boundary Locations' select 'South' for 'Upstream' and 'North' for 'Downstream'. Leave the defaults for the 'Additional Parameters'. Click OK. You will notice the 'Run' button is now active. 
  7. Click Run. This will run the simulation we have set up. While the simulation is running the MoRPHED GUI will be unresponsive and its status will read 'Not Responding'. Once the simulation is finished the GUI will once again become responsive. If you navigate to the directory you specified for the simulation you will notice there are now three folders, 'Inputs', 'Outputs', and 'temp'. The Inputs folder contains copies of the initial DEM and input file, also all the files MoRPHED generates that are necessary to run Delft3D, and the Delft3D simulation outputs. The Outputs folder contains the hydraulic and topographic outputs for each event in GeoTiff and PNG format. You will also notice a new file has been generated with the directory name and the '.display.morph' extension. This is and XML file that is used by the MoRPHED Viewer for displaying model outputs. 

View Simulation Results

  1. In your MoRPHED installation directory find, and open, MoRPHED_Viewer.exe
  2. Select File > Open and browse to the folder containing the MoRPHED simulation you would like to view. Simulations need not be complete to view available results. In the top directory of the MoRPHED simulation open the file with the extension '.display.morph'.
  3. You should now be able to use the arrows to navigate through the available results. 


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