<div style="display: flex; justify-content: center;"> <a href="https://github.com/NHERI-SimCenter/HydroUQ/#gh-light-mode-only"><img width=256px src="./icons/HydroUQ_Icon_Black_BorderRight.svg#gh-light-mode-only" align="left" /></a> <a href="https://github.com/NHERI-SimCenter/HydroUQ/#gh-dark-mode-only"><img width=256px src="./icons/HydroUQ_Icon_White_BorderRight.svg#gh-dark-mode-only" align="left" /></a> <span style="display:inline-block; width: 25px;"></span> <div> <p> <h3 class="subtitle"><b>HydroUQ - Desktop App</b></h3> <h3>Water-borne Hazards Engineering with Uncertainty Quantification</h3> <h5><i>Justin Bonus, Frank McKenna, Pedro Arduino, Ajay Harish, Nicolette Lewis</i></h5> <h5>NHERI SimCenter, 2020-2025</h5> <br> </p> </div> </div>

Why Use HydroUQ?

The HydroUQ desktop application is a user-facing portal for cutting-edge engineering workflows targeting tsunami and storm-surge demands on structures. It is a free, open-source, graphical software for simulating a structures's response with uncertainty quantification (UQ) during water-borne natural hazard loading. The application's interchangeable workflow allows you to swap between popular uncertainty quantification methods (e.g. Forward, Sensitivity, Reliability) to upgrade your previously deterministic models to probabilistic ones. Modular design lets you drop-in your own building models (SIM), event types (EVT), nonlinear structural analysis (FEM), engineering demand parameters (EDP), and more.

Capabilities

Drop-in uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods like forward propagation, sensitivity, and reliability analysis onto previously deterministic computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models using SimCenter UQ and/or Dakota backends
Model experiments from validated wave flume digital twin
- Oregon State University's Large Wave Flume OSU LWF
- Oregon State University's Directional Wave Basin OSU DWB
- University of Washington's Washington Air-Sea Interaction Facility UW WASIRF
- Waseda University Tsunami's Wave Basin WU TWB
- United State's Geological Survey's Debris-Flow Flume USGS DFF
Bathymetry/topography of the ocean floor and land surface for accurate wave propagation
Shallow-water solutions (e.g., GeoClaw) as boundary conditions to 3D CFD (e.g., OpenFOAM)
Capture high-fidelity wave-driven debris motion, impacts, damming, and deposition.
User-defined buildings for wave loading input and structural response output
Design structures including Multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) model, steel building model, OpenSees models, and OpenSeesPy models
Output probabilistic building responses, velocities and pressure at any point in the fluid domain
Supports multiscale coupling by resolving areas of interest with a 2D shallow water solver (e.g., GeoClaw) and a 3D CFD solver (e.g., OpenFOAM) and bridging them at an interface.
Model elasto-plastic, topology-changing debris and/or structures under wave-loads with the Material Point Method (MPM)

Quick Links

Data-Repositories

Comparison data of ClaymoreUW MPM to DualSPHysics SPH and STAR-CCM+ CFD against stochastic experiments by Goserberg et al. 2016. For comparison details, see Bonus et al. 2025, "Tsunami Debris Motion and Loads in a Scaled Port Setting: Comparative Analysis of Three State-of-the-Art Numerical Methods Against Experiments", published in Coastal Engineering.

DesignSafe DataDepot Repository

Citing HydroUQ

If you use HydroUQ in your research, please cite our software as:

@software{BonusMcKennaArduinoHarishLewis2025,
  author = {Justin Bonus and Frank McKenna and Pedro Arduino and Ajay Harish and Nicolette Lewis},
  title = {HydroUQ},
  year = {2025},
  month = {8},
  note = {NHERI-SimCenter/HydroUQ: Version 4.1.0 (v4.1.0). Zenodo.},
  url = {https://zenodo.org/records/15319477},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15319477}
}

include the NHERI SimCenter's workflow architecture using:

@Article{Deierlein2020,
  author={Deierlein, Gregory G. and McKenna, Frank and Zsarnóczay, Adam and Kijewski-Correa, Tracy and Kareem, Ahsan and Elhaddad, Wael and Lowes, Laura and Schoettler, Matthew J. and Govindjee, Sanjay},   
  title={A Cloud-Enabled Application Framework for Simulating Regional-Scale Impacts of Natural Hazards on the Built Environment},      
  journal={Frontiers in Built Environment},      
  volume={6},           
  year={2020},      
  url={https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbuil.2020.558706},       
  doi={10.3389/fbuil.2020.558706},      
  issn={2297-3362},   
}

and cite the underlying multi-physics engine, ClaymoreUW , as:

@software{bonus_2025_15128706,
  author       = {Bonus, Justin and
                  Arduino, Pedro},
  title        = {ClaymoreUW},
  month        = apr,
  year         = 2025,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {1.0.0},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.15128706},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15128706},
  swhid        = {swh:1:dir:9cbe98d28ea95b5758a235e84b601ce1214c6192
                   ;origin=https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15128705;vi
                   sit=swh:1:snp:a6c72ffcb71d94a657a09c1263c1765090f4
                   6ae5;anchor=swh:1:rel:0ae156dadd4f4ba1268431ec7205
                   4b9d8b6cc328;path=claymore-master
                  },
}

SimCenter Eco-System

The challenges of natural hazards engineering are addressed by the NHERI SimCenter through a suite of applications that provide cutting-edge tools for researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders. The applications are designed to work together to provide a comprehensive solution for natural hazards engineering. A puzzle-piece diagram of the SimCenter ecosystem is shown below:

In reality, this is a software workflow representation of the PEER Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) framework that has been extended to include other natural hazards:

HydroUQ is just one part of the NHERI SimCenter ecosystem that provides cutting-edge open-source tools for natural hazards engineering. Tools like quoFEM, EE-UQ, WE-UQ, HydroUQ, PBE, and R2D work together to provide a comprehensive solution for natural hazards engineering. The SimCenter ecosytem forms a modular hierarchy that allows you to pick and choose tools in the workflow for your specific research or engineering problem.

<img

HydroUQ

Install / Use

README