Arc Hydro
Free
Esri's free hydrology framework for ArcGIS Pro — terrain preprocessing and the data model behind many agency workflows.
TauDEM
StableUtah State's parallel terrain-analysis suite — D-infinity flow modelling and objective stream-network extraction.
by Utah State University
- Pricing
- Open Source
- License
- GPL-2.0
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- C++, MPI
- Platform
- Windows, Linux
About TauDEM
TauDEM (Terrain Analysis Using Digital Elevation Models), by David Tarboton at Utah State University, is the research-grade standard for DEM-based hydrology: pit removal, D8 and D-infinity flow models, contributing area, and stream-network delineation with objective drop-analysis thresholds rather than arbitrary ones. Its MPI parallelisation lets it chew through very large DEMs.
The D-infinity method — apportioning flow between neighbours by slope direction — originates here and matters wherever dispersal and wetness patterns count. Interfaces exist for ArcGIS and QGIS, and the CLI slots into scripted pipelines cleanly.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
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