ABSTRACT
This book chapter presents a methodology for flood modeling using entirely free-to-download, open-source software. The procedure encompasses three stages of preprocessing, solving, and post-processing. In the pre-processing stage, the geographic information system software QGIS is used to process a LiDAR image into a stereolithography file. This file is then used to generate a digital elevation map using the open-source computational fluid dynamics code OpenFOAM. The shallow water equations are solved within the framework of OpenFOAM using a solver called shallowFoam and post-processed using Paraview. The results are presented for four test cases of increasing the complexity and the outcomes show that the methodology produces very satisfactory agreement when compared with the commercial flood models.
