Patent ID: 11954410
Assignee: DREXEL UNIVERSITY
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A method for delineating a boundary of a watershed, the method comprising:
receiving a pour point of the watershed and coordinates of confluence of the watershed in a larger watershed;
creating an abstraction of a flow direction grid G based on the pour point, wherein the abstraction denotes at least one lattice point of each grid cell of the watershed;
applying a modified nested set (MNS) to the abstraction of the flow direction grid G, wherein the MNS captures hierarchical complexity and nested structure of the waterbodies;
applying a Haag Shokoufandeh Marching (HSM) algorithm on the MNS applied flow direction grid, which creates the boundary of the watershed by marching around an edge of the watershed and never entering an internal area of the watershed, wherein HSM relies on structural properties of a raster grid comprising root cells and internal cells, wherein the root cells are raster grid cells that flow into cells with null values, and wherein the cells with null values are associated with the water bodies;
identifying a valid march direction based on a current march location of the HSM algorithm based on the application of the HSM algorithm; and
identifying the lattice point to extend the march based on the march direction and the MNS applied flow direction grid for delineating the boundary of the watershed.