SEFA - System for Environmental Flow Analysis

Several  recent technological and generational changes have led to the need for improved approaches to riverine habitat modeling and more comprehensive environmental flow assessments.  The Instream Flow Incremental  Methodology described an impact assessment framework but did not create the comprehensive software which would allow for a complete implementation of that framework.   SEFA, System for Environmental Flow Analysis, is a new software program that implements the substance of the IFIM.  SEFA has been created through a collaboration of the primary creative forces behind the principal versions of existing physical habitat simulation software.  Bob Milhous (PHABSIM), Ian Jowett (RHYHABSIM), and Tom Payne (RHABSIM) have contributed their considerable experience acquired through development and use of these programs, and Juan Manuel Diez Hernandez provides both his experience and Spanish-language capability.  In a single Windows 7-compatible 32-bit program currently in beta testing, SEFA either contains or branches to legal-institutional analysis, both one and two dimensional habitat hydraulics analysis, habitat suitability criteria development, water temperature modeling, sediment transport analysis, dissolved oxygen modeling, riparian modeling, and time series analysis.  This new tool and a not-for-profit technical and educational support structure will ensure continuity into the future for the critical science of instream flow evaluation and environmental flow protection.