About – What's New

Emergency planning with sea-level rise from national forecast data

Aug 26, 2019

In collaboration with the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) we are proud to launch a truly unique analysis in SCALGO Live. We have coupled our traditional sea-level rise analysis with DMI's national sea-level forecasts. When you enable the new layer, which you can find in the Forecasts category in your library, a slider shows up that allows you to pick a particular point in time and see the effect of the forecasted sea-levels for that time. The DMI forecasts go 5 days into the future.

Screenshot from August 23 showing the sea-level forecast for Sun the 25th of August 2019 at 22:00. No significant flooding for this particular event. The colors in the ocean show the forecasted sea-level.

The analysis is incorporated into workspaces and is enabled when you create a workspace for Sea-level rise. We also have a sensitivity analysis to allow you to take the uncertainty in DMI's forecast into account. According to DMI, the uncertainty in the forecast is 10%. Therefore we have added checkboxes "-10%" and "+10%" that allow you to view respectively the areas that would not be flooded if the forecast was 10% lower, and the areas that would be flooded if it was 10% higher.

Since a severe increase in sea-level is not an everyday event (luckily) we have added the forecasts from three historical events: Bodil (2013), Alfrida (2019) and "Den stille storm" (2017). These work in the same way as the current forecast and allow you to experience how the system would act if a similar event was to appear in the current forecast.

The forecasted sea levels during the 2013 Bodil storm and the resulting flood risk forecast for a section of Roskilde Fjord. The screenshots shows the situation on Saturday December 7 at 3am as predicted by the forecast from Tuesday December 3.

This new feature allows emergency response teams to easily show the in-land consequences of DMI forecasts for communication with the public and for planning. In the latter case, mobile barriers, sand bags and other remedies can be placed and their effects assessed quickly and intuitively through workspaces.

You can read more about the new functionality in the manual.

Detailed information about watershed composition

Jul 5, 2019

We have updated SCALGO Live in Sweden, Norway and Denmark with a powerful new interation of the watershed tool. When you use the watershed tool you now get information about the composition of land use and/or soil types in that watershed.

Screenshot from SCALGO Live Sweden showing a watershed query and the distribution of land use in the watershed.

The following data is available in each country:

New Norway Elevation Model

We have updated the national elevation model based on the newest data from Kartverket, the anlyses have been updated accordingly. Also, we're using a more detailed building dataset (N5 instead of N20), so also smaller sheds etc. are included.

The areas marked in yellow have been updated. For precise update information please consult the Norway/Sources layer using the point info tool.

Updated GeoDanmark data

We have updated the GeoDanmark data in SCALGO Live Denmark. We are now serving data in the newest GeoDanmark specification (version 6).

Better styling of imported vector layers

Jun 19, 2019

You can now change the color of vector datasets you have imported into SCALGO Live by dragging them onto the dock. You can access the new styles in the gear menu for the imported layer.

New Swedish Base Map

We have switched the view projection for SCALGO Live Sweden to the national Swedish coordinate system (SWEREF 99 TM). This implies that we can now use the standard base map put out by Lantmäteriet: topografisk webbkarta. The base map comes in two styles, one with muted colors (shown below) and one with full colors. This should also make it easier to integrate SCALGO Live with certain online GIS and will improve the precision of elevation profiles.

Note: As part of this change we have made two minor changes to the Swedish flash flood map. In the flash flood map watershed layer we now visually distinguish watersheds that end up in the sea in different places. This new rendering implies that if you put the rain slider so high that all depresssions are full, the flash flood map watersheds visually match those from depression-free flow. The actual definition of the watersheds have not changed as a result of this update, it is purely a change in visualization. Furthermore, we now fill all depressions in the DEM of a volume smaller than 3 m3 (used to be 1 m3), resulting in a cleaner flash flood map with fewer spurious sinks.

New Danish Elevation Model

Apr 18, 2019

A few days ago SDFE released an updated version of the Danish elevation model. The updates come from a newly acquired point cloud covering Fyn and Djursland primarily, but the model has also changed elsewhere. The complete model is now available for use in SCALGO Live under the name Denmark/2018 - you can find it in the library. The Denmark/2015 model is still available and our analyses have not (yet) been updated. You can create workspaces from the Denmark/2018 model using the "Existing Model" button in the workspace creation menu. You will automatically get the hydrological corrections in your workspace.

(left) An area south of Odense from the national Danish elevation model from 2015. (right) The area in the updated model reflects recent developments in the area.



Work with gradients in the profile widget

Apr 12, 2019

You can now work with gradients of your workspace terrain edits. You can set a constant gradient across the length of the feature and you can get information about the gradient of edges adjacent to each vertex. You can now also right-click to fix individual vertices. This allows you to efficiently change the slope of sub-paths.

Denmark: updated national computation

We have refreshed the Danish national analysis using GeoDanmark data (e.g. building footprints and hydrological corrections) from February 2019.

Flood risk screening from rivers and flow paths

Mar 25, 2019

We are proud to announce the Danish release of our new SCALGO Live add-on module to estimate flood risk from water flowing in streams, rivers, ditches and along roads. In fact, you can use the new module to estimate the flood risk of any flow rate and along any flow path in the high-resolution Danish elevation model (260 billion elevation cells). The feature is fully integrated into SCALGO Live with both a national analysis and powerful workspace options for working with water flows both in streams and on roads. If you are a Danish user then contact us for more on obtaining access to the new module. If you are a user outside Denmark then stay tuned, we are working hard to release this in more countries.

You can read more about the new functionality in the manual and in the full release announcement.

New workspace tool: Raise and lower terrain uniformly

Mar 15, 2019

We have added a new terrain edit tool for workspaces. The tool allows you to draw a path or a polygon and raise or lower all parts of the terrain covered by the object by a fixed amount. This is useful for e.g. modeling water tubes in emergency response situations where the water tube follows the terrain instead of being set at a fixed absolute elevation.

Example of a 1 meter tall water tube rolled out on a shore. The profile window shows the original terrain (blue line in the graph) and how the water tube (red line in the graph) follows the original terrain, but 1 meters higher.

Importing LandXML TINs, LAS point clouds

Feb 22, 2019

We have extended import support with several popular file types. These include TINs (triangulated meshes) stored in LandXML or Shapefiles, exportable from BIM/CAD software (such as Trimble Novapoint, AutoCAD Civil 3D and Bentley InRoads/PowerCivil), as well as point clouds stored as LAS files. These formats are supported for constructing workspaces, but more importantly for including new data into existing workspaces. This allows, for example, constructing a workspace on a national model for context, and then importing a newly planned road or re-designed terrain on top.

Example of a new road modelled as a TIN imported into a SCALGO Live workspace. © Statens Vegvesen, Norway

You can read more about the extended import support in the manual.

Download format selection for polygon downloads

It is now possible to set default formats to be used when downloading data from SCALGO Live in the bottom of your account page. The selected vector format will be used when downloading upstream polygons using the watershed tool, and exporting depression polygons from the Depression Map. Previously these would always be exported as Shapefiles.

The selected defaults for vector, raster and aerial data will also apply for normal downloads, but you can still change away from the default in the download dialog as before.

Denmark: updated national computation

We have refreshed the national analysis using GeoDanmark data from November 2018. We now get the hydrological corrections directly from GeoDanmark. This implies that the changes to the hydrological corrections made before November 2018 are reflected in this computation.

New model in Sweden

Dec 19, 2018

Recently, the Swedish mapping authority, Lantmäteriet, released the Laserdata Skog point cloud as open data. We have made this dataset available for our SCALGO Live Sweden users. You can find it in the library through the "Add" button in the bottom left of your screen.

The current dataset covers only a small part of the country. It will be updated regularly by Lantmäteriet and we will also keep it updated in SCALGO Live. It has about 1-2 points per square meter, and is made available as a 1 m raster in SCALGO Live. In comparison, the national Swedish model is a 2 m raster.

A comparison of the national model and the model derived from the Laserdata Skog point cloud.

Naturally, the data is also available for download and for use in workspaces. If you want to use it in a workspace, use the "Existing Model" option in the workspace creation dialog. After selecting your region you can then click the green pencil next to the elevation model to create your workspace.

You can read more about Laserdata Skog in the manual.

Side slopes on workspace features

Dec 5, 2018

By popular demand it is now possible to create paths and areas with non-vertical side slopes (banks) in your workspace. Use this new feature to make your terrain edits look more realistic and get closer to the final design of your solution. Interesting use-cases for this new feature include:

  • Estimate the surface area required by a new channel or retention basin including the extra width taken up by the banks.
  • Achieve more accurate volume estimates for basins.
  • Bring more realistic and better-looking project proposals and screenings to stake holders and the public.
  • Improve performance in subsequent processing, e.g. in hydro-dynamic modeling.
The user has created a channel and a retention basin to increase the volume of water that can be stored in an area close to a major road. Both the retention basin and the channel have a side slope of 30 degrees.

See the manual for details on how to add side slopes to your features.

Bigger workspaces

We have increased the workspace size limit significantly, by factor of 5 in most cases.

Updated Orthophotos in Denmark

The new Danish orthophotos from spring 2018 are now available for viewing and download in SCALGO Live. Find them in the library.

A tram on the new tramway in Aarhus, Denmark.