External Forcing Data

Owned by Kester Scandrett
Last updated: 30 Mar, 2023 by Bui Bich Thuy (Deactivated)
4 min read

A common function needed for all the boundary forcing data series is the need to add, edit, view, and compare time series for forcings. Following is a summary of the processes and other time series utilities in EE10. A list of the forcing data is accessed using a LMC on the External Forcing Data menu shown in Figure 1. The number of series that have been generated is shown in brackets. Some of the items in the menu have unique options which are described on the particular page for that option.

The time series for the external forcing data can be assigned to boundary groups and cells later in the Boundary Condition tab. The display on the right of Figure 1 provides the user with a summary of the currently assigned boundary groups and input tables, time series.

Figure 1. External Forcing Data menu and report.


LMC on any item will display a report about the item selected while RMC displays the options to Add New Data Series and Import Existing EFDC Formatted Series. If data series have already been added, the user can edit them with Edit Data Series and view a plot with View Data Series.

  • Add New Data Series allows the user to create a new data series with the user's inputs and options.
  • With the Import Existing EFDC Formatted Series option, the user can browse to an existing EFDC data file ( QSER.INP, ASER.INP, PSER.INP,....) and the data file will be imported as a data series.

Figure 2. External Forcing Data: sub-menu options.

Add New Data Series

Figure 3 shows the Boundary Data Series general form that is displayed when the user selects Add New Data Series. Except for Harmonic Tides and Hydraulic Structures, all other sub-tabs use this general form. This form can have more options depending on the sub-tab selected.

Figure 3. General form of Boundary Data Series.


The user can add and delete series with Add New and Delete. Added series will appear in Select Series, the user can select a series using the drop-down list. The name of a series can be edited in Series Name. Press "Enter" afterward to apply the edit.

View Series  button allows the user to plot the series using EFDC+ Explorer plotting tool. The user can also choose to plot multiple series and multiple layers in a graph using View Options.

It is able to copy the data from data files and paste it directly into the table as in Figure 4. This table behaves like a Microsoft Excel (c) table where the user can use Shift and Ctrl keys to select multiple cells and includes options like Copy Data, Paste Data, Insert Row, Delete Row buttons as highlighted in Figure 4 . 

 Figure 4. Data Series table.

Import Series form

An alternative option is to import an existing ASCII data file and replace the current series data with the new data with the Import Series  button (Figure 5 )

Figure 5. Import Series button.


Once the user does this an ASCII Data Import form will appear as shown in Figure 6. The user can choose the data file to import with the Browse button. Various import settings can be adjusted here such as Header Rows to Skip,  and Data Base Date. 

The following provides a quick guide to the use of the ASCII data import form:

  • Select the data file to import using the Browse button.
  • Select the delimiter.
  • The Data Column to Import should point to the column number that contains the Y data. If there are more than two columns in the data file, it is advised to select Multiple Columns button and assign which type of data the columns is.
  • As changes are made the information in the Data Preview frame provides the results of the current settings.
  • Preview/graph the results of the current settings to see if the import results are what was expected. If not, make further adjustments, as needed, until the data imported plot is correct.
  • Press OK to finalize the actual importing process.

Figure 6. ASCII Data Import form.

Columns Format

The format of the data series table can be changed in the Columns tab. The format here follow the Standard Numeric Format Strings of C#. In this case, F4 is a floating number with 4 decimal digits. The number 4 can be replaced for a different precision value.

 Figure 7. Edit data table format.

Apply Operators

The user may also apply operators to cells :

  • Select cells to apply
  • Enter the value for the operation
  • Click on the button of the operators to Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide or Assign the value of the cell with the operator value.

Figure 8. Apply operators to cells.