HEC-RAS
FreeVerified
The world's most used hydraulic model: free 1D/2D river analysis, sediment, water quality and flood mapping.
Hydraulics & River SystemsActiveRiver Modelling2D Hydraulic Modelling
BASEMENT
ActiveETH Zurich's free 2D hydraulics and morphodynamics simulator — rivers, sediment and hazard mapping.
by ETH Zurich (VAW)
- Pricing
- Free
- License
- Freeware (ETH licence)
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- QGIS (BASEmesh)
- Platform
- Windows, Linux
About BASEMENT
BASEMENT, from ETH Zurich's Laboratory of Hydraulics (VAW), simulates 2D unsteady flow with sediment transport and morphodynamics — bedload, suspended load and bed evolution — with a GPU-accelerated solver in recent versions. Swiss flood-hazard and river-restoration practice leans on it heavily, and its sediment capabilities exceed most free competitors.
It is freeware rather than open source, with high-quality documentation and tutorials. Pre- and post-processing typically happens in QGIS via the BASEmesh plugin, keeping the whole workflow licence-free.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
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