PyHELP is an object oriented Python library providing a set of tools to estimate spatially distributed groundwater recharge and other hydrological components (runoff and evapotranspiration) using the HELP (Hydrologic Evaluation of Landfill Performance) model. PyHELP integrates weather data (from grids or stations), land conditions defined by a series of GIS maps as well as soil and geological material properties into HELP input files. PyHELP also processes HELP simulation results and outputs them as maps and graphs, including comparisons of simulation results with stream hydrographs. PyHELP thus accompanies users through the entire workflow from input file assembly to model calibration and to the documentation of results. This workflow is based on the method originally developed by Croteau et al. (2011) to assess spatially distributed groundwater recharge at the regional scale.
Please consult the documentation for more details or contact us at jean-sebastien.gosselin@ete.inrs.ca.
Install
Pip Wheels and Conda packages are both available for Python 3.6 on the Windows 64bits plateform. If you need to use PyHELP with Python 3.7 or are working on Linux or MacOS, you will have to build and install PyHELP from source. Please contact us if you need help with that.
The easiest method to install a released version of PyHELP on Windows is with Conda. To do so, you will need first to download and install the Anaconda distribution on your computer. Anaconda comes with the most important Python scientific libraries (i.e. Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, IPython, etc), including all PyHELP dependencies, in a single, easy to use environment.
Then, PyHELP can be installed, along with all its dependencies, by executing the following command in a terminal:
conda install -c cgq-qgc pyhelp
It is also possible to install PyHELP with pip, but be aware that pip installations are for advanced users. PyHELP depends on several low-level libraries for geospatial analysis, and this may cause dependency conflicts if you are not careful.
First, you will need to download and install Python 3.6 on your computer. Then, the easiest way to install PyHELP's depencies on Windows is to download Wheels from Christopher Gohlke's Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages and install them with pip in that specific order: numpy, matplotlib, scipy, pandas, shapely, fiona, pyproj, geopandas, h5py, pytables, xlrd, netcdf4. Be carefull to install the packages that were built for Python 3.6 and Windows 64bits.
Finally, you can install PyHELP with pip by executing the following command in a terminal:
python -m pip install pyhelp
