About – What's New

Regionally varying rain in DynamicFlood Sweden

Oct 2, 2024

We have changed some important things around Core+ DynamicFlood in Sweden:

  • Rain events now differ based on the region they are in. 
  • We have updated the surface roughness parameters to match MSB recommendations.
  • We updated the default maximum infiltration rate in sewered areas from 36 mm/hr to 21 mm/hr to align with sewer dimensioning practice in Sweden.

These changes only affect new workspaces, so you must create a new workspace for these changes to take effect. Your old workspaces remain unchanged.

For more information, please read the accompanying blog post (in Swedish) or check the Core+ DynamicFlood changelog.

Sweden has been divided into four different regions for the purpose of defining the correct rain event.

Veden imeytyminen nyt osana rankkasadeanalyysejä

Sep 24, 2024

Scalgo Live on saanut merkittävän päivityksen: rankkasadeanalyysit huomioivat nyt koneoppimisen avulla tuotetun maanpeitemallin ja pintamaalajien vaikutuksen veden imeytymiseen. Lisäksi kaupunkialueilla analyysit tarjoavat arvion hulevesiviemärien vaikutuksesta.

Tule mukaan webinaariin!

4. lokakuuta 2024 klo 10.00-11.00 Pietu Pankkonen, Suomen markkinapäällikkö, esittelee, miten veden imeytymisen huomioivat analyysit on tuotettu ja miten voit hyödyntää niitä työssäsi.

Rekisteröidy nyt

Lyhyt introvideo

Use Scalgo Live anywhere in the world

Sep 17, 2024

Today we have truly opened up a world of Scalgo Live. You can now access full Scalgo Live setups for all 12 countries where these are currently available, covering more than 10 million square kilometres. For all other regions, you will be able to upload your own data, making it easy to work in Scalgo Live anywhere in the world! 

We are not stopping here, we are always working on adding more countries to Scalgo Live. These will also be available to all users as they are released.

For more information about this big step for Scalgo Live, please see the accompanying blog post.

Easily switch between countries.

DynamicFlood: Live model speed info and regionally-varying rain events

Sep 11, 2024

In Core+ DynamicFlood, the default rain events used in Norway are now local design rains based on rainfall statistics from the region the workspace is in, with climate factors available based on the recommendations from the authorities. For more information, read the accompanying blog post.

Furthermore, Core+ DynamicFlood users in all countries can now see the timestep of running simulations in real time and obtain an estimate of the model's completion time. Please read the blog post for more information about this new feature.

Left: Each region in Norway has its own local design rain.

Right: Window showing the status of a DynamicFlood model that runs with low time steps, causing the running time to be high.

Sea-level rise: Download building flooding information

Jul 3, 2024

Interested in how a particular sea-level rise affects the buildings in a region? You can now download building flood risk information for the sea-level analysis, similar to what has long been possible for the Flash Flood Map. This is available from the sea-level analysis - you simply need to select the "buildings" tap in the download window.  The result is a set of building polygons in the affected area with additional fields providing the following information:

  • The minimum sea-level at which any part of the building interior is in contact with the sea.
  • The length of the wetted perimeter at the selected sea-level. The wettede perimeter is the part of the buildings perimeter in contact with the sea.
  • The wetted area, found by combining the wetted perimeter with the depth of the water adjacent to the building to get the area of the building perimeter in contact with the sea.
  • The maximum water depth along the building perimeter, as well as the coordinates where this depth can be found.

The sea-level risk for this building near Rostock Germany, for a sea-level of 3 meter, shows that the building is first affected at a sea-level of about 2 meters, and that the 28 meters of the building perimeter is affected at a 3 meters. The maximum depth of the water adjacent to the building for this event  is 15 cm.

Alongside the annotated building polygons you also get a layer of lines denoting the wetted perimeter of each building, these perimeters are annotated with the same flood-related information as the building polygons. It makes it easy to highlight the part of the buildings that are at risk of flooding.

The wetted perimeters (red lines) from the building risk download shown in a GIS with background layers from the SCALGO Live WMTS server.

Detailed contour maps and editable buildings in Workspaces

Jun 6, 2024

In Workspaces, you can now get contour maps for terrains you design, and buildings can be removed and modified as editable Objects, see more information in the accompanying blog post.

Contour lines are now generated as part of all Workspace computations. When you create your terrain design, the contours are updated to describe the new terrain accordingly. The contours are available in many different contour intervals, controlled via the contour interval slider that also exists for the national contour maps.

Transforming the way we design terrains. The combination of easy terrain editing tools and detailed contour lines make it easy for everyone to work with detailed terrain design.

Furthermore, we have improved the way buildings are included in Workspaces. Previously, buildings were implicitly included by raising their elevation in the terrain model, making them unmodifiable terrain edits. Now, they are regular edits that can easily be removed or modified. This has been done by introducing a new group of editing tools called Objects. The existing subsurface tools are considered objects, and are now available in this group.

The updated elevation tools dialog. The objects group includes buildings, subsurface paths (e.g. culverts) and subsurface basins.

Please read the blog post for more information about this release.

New in Modelspaces: Explore hydrodynamic simulations and visualise the dynamics of flow velocity

May 13, 2024

We have just released some exciting features for Modelspaces in SCALGO Live.  You can now query information about water flow, volume, and depth from your dynamic flood simulations.

We have also created a whole new set of visualisation styles to animate the dynamics of velocity.  The old styles are still available, should you need them.

Please read more in the accompanying blog post.

One of the new features allows you to draw a line across flux results to get information about flow rate and volumes.

National German high-resolution land cover map

May 6, 2024

Today we announce the availability of a nationwide high-resolution land cover map for SCALGO Live in Germany. The map, produced by SCALGO, is based on machine learning techniques and has a high resolution of 20 cm.

It is available as a standalone layer in the Land cover category in the library. 

A section of the German land cover map.

The map is fully integrated into SCALGO Live Germany and is, for instance, used to show aggregate land cover information for watershed queries. For more information please see the complete release announcement.

German cadastral maps

As part of this release we are also adding aggregated cadastral data to SCALGO Live Germany. The new layer, called Flurstücke, is available in the ALKIS category. We have also computed aggregated land cover information for each land parcel, you will find this layer in the Land Cover category.

Note that only a select number of federal states are available in the Flurstücke layer, please consult the documentation for more information about this.

Specify basins and protrusions by drawing their outer boundary

Mar 12, 2024

SCALGO Live has long supported creating basins and protrusions having side slopes with a given gradient.   The way this works is that you draw a polygon covering the bottom of your basin or the top of your protrusion (hill).  Then you specify a gradient, and SCALGO Live automatically interpolates between the drawn flat area and the surrounding terrain while respecting the specified gradient.

A basin created by drawing the bottom area and adding slopes on the outside.

There are use cases, however, where it is more natural to be able to specify the outer boundary of your basin or hill.   For example, you may have a given plot of land where you want to create water storage.

SCALGO Live now supports this use case:    Again you draw a polygon and specify a gradient, but this time SCALGO Live adds the slope on the inside.

A basin created by drawing the outer boundary and adding slopes on the inside.

The tools you have always used for creating basins and protrusions now support both ways of specifying side slopes.  Use the checkbox "Side slopes are outside" if you want to add slopes on the outside of your area (the default is now to add them on the inside).

The new controls for specifying if side slopes go on the inside or on the outside of the drawn area.

The two modes behave a bit differently:

  • When adding outside slopes, the polygon you draw is a flat horizontal polygon (since it's the bottom of your basin), so in the profile view you will see all vertices at the same elevation (and you cannot change this).   How far the side slopes will go depends on the elevation of the terrain, for an uneven terrain it is not easily predictable.
  • When adding inside slopes, the polygon you draw actually has 3D coordinates (SCALGO Live automatically samples the terrain at each vertex).   This makes it possible to create a basin whose outside aligns with the terrain along the given area boundary.   From these 3D coordinates, SCALGO Live then computes the appropriate sloping to achieve the target depth (or height for protrusions).    The depth is always measured from the lowest boundary vertex, the height is measured from the highest boundary vertex.

    When you edit the boundary of such a basin, you may have to readjust the elevations at the vertices to make sure it again aligns with the terrain, otherwise you'll have sharp edges on the boundary.

Simplified path features

Feb 28, 2024

Since the very beginnings of SCALGO Live, it was possible to modify the terrain model to see how this influences the flow of water and the various analyses.

The first tools were quite simple, and allowed you to draw walls, depressions, or protrusions with vertical walls only. Then came side slopes for more realistic dams and basins, the possibility to specify the cross section (for instance to represent a river bed according to actual measurements), and most recently the ability to create a terrain by drawing contour lines.

Until now, when you draw a path feature using the "interpolate", "raise", or "raise flat" tools without any side slopes, it was still represented in the terrain as we implemented it in the first version many years ago (top figure below).

We have now changed it so that when you create a simple path without side slopes or general cross sections, it is added to the terrain using the same method that we use for general paths (that is, for paths with side slopes or cross sections). As you can see in the bottom figure, this avoids the traditional plateaus at each vertex, and in general fits better with the other ways of using our tools.


(top) Old path style with rounded edges and discontinuities at joints. (bottom) New default path style.

It is worth noting that the new method is applied only to newly created features - your existing features remain unchanged. If you want an existing path feature to use the new method, use "Edit both cross sections" from the context menu, select "Width only", and save again. Note that you will not be able to go back to the traditional way, though.