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    Product Overview

    Graphical User Interface

    Data Input Features

    Environment Unit Management

    Data Interpolation, Contouring and Mapping

    Applications

Product Overview

GW Contour, developed by Waterloo Hydrogeologic, Inc., represents the first data interpolation and contouring program to also incorporate advanced techniques for mapping velocity vectors and particle tracks – all within one, easy-to-use program! GW Contour offers the perfect combination of tools and techniques for groundwater and environmental professionals. GW Contour is ideal for:

• Graphical mapping and reporting of groundwater levels
• Preliminary interpolation and contouring of contaminant concentrations (groundwater, soil, or air)
• Assessing groundwater flow direction and magnitude
• Contouring data obtained from pumping tests, dataloggers, groundwater monitoring events, weather stations, groundwater models, borehole logs, etc.
• Gridding ground surface elevations or hydrogeologic layer for use in groundwater flow models, or GIS
• Analyzing exposure when assessing human health or ecological risk
• Comparing conceptual interpretations with calculated interpretations

Whether contouring elevations, contaminant concentrations, or other spatially variable data, GW Contour has the techniques and tools necessary to map and report your data in a professional manner.

• Provides an all-in-one solution for interpolating and mapping groundwater and environmental data
• Offers the unique ability to calculate forward and reverse particle movements
• Capable of calculating velocity vectors (magnitude and direction), important for groundwater projects
• Quick and easy georeferencing of raster-based images used as basemaps
• Advanced interpolation techniques to address various data sets
• Intuitive and logical graphical user interface design
• Handles a wide range of environmental units

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Graphical User Interface

The GW Contour GUI is designed to offer maximum productivity through easy-to-access features, and logical menu structure. This is possible through the use of 4 distinct navigation features. GW Contour allows you to quickly locate your source files, and create dazzling interpretations of your groundwater and environmental data

• Menu Bar: Provides a logical sequence of steps for preparing your projects, and provides easy navigation and access to primary features such as Project, View, Input, Output, Setting, and Help features.

• Property Viewer : Displays global properties and associated settings such as data type, domain values, and display settings
• Project Tree: Offers a logical methodology for displaying and accessing data and attributes for various project layers
• Plot Viewer: Graphically displays interpolated values and calculated results including color maps, contour lines, velocity vectors, forward/reverse particles, georeferenced maps, etc.

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Data Input Features

• Import data from various sources including ASCII (TXT, ASCI, DAT, TAB,) , ESRI Points Shape (SHP), Excel (XLS), Access (MDB), Surfer grid (GRD)
• Import various X,Y,Z data types including water levels, soil porosity, aquifer hydraulic conductivity, water quality concentrations, contaminant concentrations, ground surface elevations, recharge, etc.
• Project units include Head (m, cm, ft), Hydraulic Conductivity (m/s,cm/s, m/d, ft/day), Concentrations (mg/l, ppm, ppb, meq/l, ug/l, mg/kg), Velocity (m/s, cm/s, m/day, ft/day), Time (sec, days, months), Coordinates (cm, m, ft)
• Import and geo-reference a variety of raster images for use as project base maps (BMP, JPG, TIF, GIF, SVG, EMF, PNG)
• Supports import and export of AutoCAD files (DXF)
• Easily define project extents (Xmin, Xmax, Ymin, Ymax)
• Define number of particles on a circle
• Define number of particle points on a line
• Define vertical exaggeration (X:Y ratio)

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Environment Unit Management

GW Contour offers acomplete selection of environmental units, specific to the groundwater and environmental industry.

• Head units: meters (m), centimeters (cm), and feet (ft)
• Hydraulic conductivity: meters/second (m/s), centimeters/second (cm/s), meters/day (m/day), and feet/day (ft/day)
• Velocity: meters/second (m/s), centimeters/second (cm/s), meters/day (m/day), and feet/day (ft/day)
• Concentrations: milligrams/liter (mg/l), parts per million (ppm), parts per billion (ppb), milli-equivalents/liter (meq/l), micrograms/liter (ug/l), and milligrams/kilogram (mg/kg)
• Time: seconds (sec), days (day), and months (month)
• Coordinates: meters (m), centimeters (cm), and feet (ft)
• General: handles all user-defined units

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Data Interpolation, Contouring and Mapping

Groundwater and environmental projects often incorporate a wide range of spatial information in the form of X, Y, Z point data. Generally these data require some form of analysis or transformation in order to better understand what the data means, and how it may relate to a project scope. Data interpolation is a common technique used to generate spatial information between known data points. This provides a means to developing spatially descriptive maps and contours used in analyzing and reporting groundwater and environmental data. GW Contour offers all the functionality required for importing, interpolating, and mapping your data!

• Surfaces/horizon elevations (bedrock layers, top of aquifer, bottom of aquifer, topography, etc.)
• Soil properties (hydraulic conductivity, transmissivity, soil moisture, porosity, etc.)
• Boundary conditions (recharge, groundwater head, initial concentrations, etc.)
• Monitoring data (water levels, solute concentrations, water quality, etc.)
• Miscellaneous data formats (aquifer vulnerability, slope, population and geospatial analyses, etc.)

Most of these data include attributes saved into X,Y,Z data file format – all can be imported into GW Contour. However, selecting the appropriate interpolation technique for a particular data set can be a challenging task. To reduce this complication, GW Contour comes complete with four (4) specific data interpolation techniques, all offering robust interpolation solutions for a wide range of groundwater and environmental data types. GW Contour incorporates the most commonly used 2D data interpolation techniques for the groundwater and environmental industry. These include:

• Natural Neighbor: is among the most robust interpolation methods available to date, and produces a conservative result by finding weighted averages, at each interpolation point, of the functional values associated with the subset of data that are natural neighbors of each interpolation point. Natural Neighbor is often the "choice" method for sparsely populated or erratic data sets, such as regional scale interpolation of precipitation.
• Inverse Distance: is based on the premise that data points are weighted by the inverse of their distance to the estimation point. This approach has the effect of giving more influence to nearby data points than those farther away, and is ideally suited for projects with tightly populated data points such as small scale monitoring projects, or projects with an abundance for normally distributed data.
• Kriging: applies a statistical weighting method to determine the effect of distance on an interpolated point, and also provides a statistical variance. This method is often applied when estimating layer surfaces based on known elevations at specific points. Kriging is used for generating contour maps of topography, defining continuous hydrogeologic and geologic layer elevations, contouring concentration data, etc.
• Bilinear: is a polished and more common interpolation approach, bilinear interpolation estimates the empty spaces between known points that are spread over a wider radius, thereby providing a visibly smoother result. Bilinear interpolation is ideally suited for generating contour maps of any environmental surface such as water tables, geologic layers, elevation maps, etc. stored in .GRD format.

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Applications

• Graphical mapping and reporting of groundwater levels
• Preliminary interpolation and contouring of contaminant concentrations (groundwater, soil, or air)
• Assessing groundwater flow direction and magnitude
• Calculating the direction and rate of groundwater flow
• Contouring data obtained from pumping tests, dataloggers, groundwater monitoring events, weather stations, groundwater models, borehole logs, etc.
• Gridding ground surface elevations for use in groundwater flow models, or GIS
• Analyzing exposure pathways when assessing human health risk
• Comparing conceptual interpretations with calculated interpretations

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