CUENCAS is a river networks analysis tool. It is a simplified version of the original GIS called HidroSig, developed by the Water Resources Department at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia over the last 8 years.

While HidroSig has evolved to be a full featured GIS, CUENCAS has focused on river networks as a numerical simulation and data archiving GIS environment. CUENCAS is ment to be a research tool, rather than a commercial product. The development of CUENCAS since 2001 has been supported by various grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Besides being a DEMs analysis tool, CUENCAS, establishes a Data Organization Framework (DOF), that allows different modules to interact with spatially and/or temporarly concurrent data. The DOF is illustrated in greater detail here.

The group of tools currently built into Cuencas can be group as:

• River Network Extraction from Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)
• River Network Geomorphologic Analysis including but not limited to:
  • Topologic and Geometric Width Function
  • Horton Analysis
  • Generalized Horton Analysis (Simple scaling of network properties)
  • Network links analysis (Length, area, slope, etc) including xy-plots for link properties (e.g. Hack's Law)
  • Area-Altitude
  • Self-similarity based on the Random Self Similar network (RSN) model.
  • Scale analysis of spatially distributed variables (Precipitation, Evaporation) in the river network context.
• Link based rainfall-runoff model
  • 3D view of the basin
  • Decomposition of basin into links and hillslopes
  • Real time flow simulations
• Water Balance
• Visualization tools for DEMs
• Visualization and Animation tools for Spatial Fields (e.g. precipitation)
• Time Series Analysis
• Rainfall Fields Simulator