About RiverSpill

RiverSpill is an ArcView (3.x) based system to track and model the flow and concentration of contaminants in our Nation's water supply. The application provides online access to U.S. Geological Survey real-time and historical stream flow data.

RiverSpill provides interfaces to assist with a range of real-time responses and planning scenarios. RiverSpill calculates time of travel based on real time stream flow measurements, decay, and dispersion of constituents introduced into water bodies.

The RiverSpill Model contains the following capabilities:

• Tracks the chemical or biological constituent,under real time flow conditions, to a water supply intake.
• Determines the concentration of a contaminant as it decays and disperses within the water source.
• Associates an intake to a water filtration plant.
• Identifies the population served by the water treatment plant.

RiverSpill integrates the following software-based assessment tools and databases:

• Stream flow and transport models.
• USGS Enhanced Reach file database.
• USEPA Public Water Supply database.
• USGS Real Time Stream Flow database.
• USEPA Sewage Treatment Plant database.

RiverSpill Briefings

PDF briefings describing RiverSpill.

• Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) Winter Meeting, 2003
• Source Water Protection & Homeland Security, 2003
• RiverSpill
• Using The RiverSpill Model for Source Water Protection, Proceedings AWWA Source Water Protection Symposium, 2005
• Riverspill and PipelineNet: Waterborne Transport Models for CBR Consequence Assessment, US Army National Ground Intelligence Center, Proceedings CBR Consequence Assessment Modeling for the Intelligence Community May 18-192004

Drinking Water Safety and Security Workshop

2nd Workshop on Advanced Technologies in Real-Time Monitoring and Modeling for Drinking Water Safety and Security, Rutgers University, 2002

• Workshop June 27 and 28, 2002
• Workshop Presentations
• Abstract:An Integrated Water Quality Security System for Emergency Response
• Abstract: RiverSpill, A Real-Time Emergency Response and Planning Tool

View Published RiverSpill Papers

Samuels, W.B., Amstutz, D.E., Bahadur, R., and Pickus, J., 2006. RiverSpill: A National Application for Drinking Water Protection, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, Vol. 132, No. 4, pp. 393-403.

W. B. Samuels, J. Pickus, D. Amstutz, R. Bahadur. Using Network Analyst to calculate pollutant travel times. Proceedings ESRI International User Conference, 2001, San Diego, CA.

Samuels, W.B., Bahadur, R., Pickus, J. Amstutz, D., and McCormack, K., 2003, RiverSpill: A Real-Time Emergency Response and Planning Tool, Proceedings UCOWR/NIWR/EWRI Conference on Water Security in the 21st Century, July 30 – August 1, 2003, Washington, DC

W. B. Samuels, R. Bahadur, D. Amstutz, J. Pickus, and W. Grayman. RiverSpill: A GIS-Based Real Time Transport Model for Source Water Protection, Proceedings Watershed 2002, Florida.

Samuels, WB., Bahadur, R., and Pickus, J., Integrating the National Hydrography Dataset Into RiverSpill, Proceedings ESRI User Conference 2003, San Diego, CA.

Robert G. Taylor, Protecting surface water intakes affected by transportation corridor releases: modeling contaminants with RiverSpill, Proceedings AWWA Source Water Protection Symposium, 2005.

Chehata, M., Baadur, R., Amstutz, D., and Samuels, WB. RiverSpill For Water Protection in the Potomac River Basin, Proceedings AWRA Geographic Information Systems and Water Resources IV, Spring Spciality Conference, May 8-10, 2006, Houston, Texas.