HEC-RAS Modelling for River Basin Management of Indian Rivers—A Review

Natural catastrophes like earthquakes, landslides, floods, cyclones, and droughts happen almost year as a result of climate change, and controlling these occurrences is essential in countries like India. Extreme weather occurrences brought on by rising temperatures make disaster patterns unpredictable. An increase in heat waves, floods and cyclones floods puts additional strain on disaster management resources. Unplanned expansion has left many cities and towns susceptible to natural calamities. The effects of disasters are exacerbated by encroachment on natural rivers, inadequate drainage systems, and weak building structures. Despite the fact that a number of models and strategies have been established to manage these disasters, none of them can fully capture all the issues. In a nation like India, preventing natural floods and droughts necessitates a combination of environmental preservation, better infrastructure and sustainable water management. Measures to control flooding in flood-prone areas include limiting construction in flood-prone areas, enforcing land-use restrictions, constructing multipurpose dams to control river flow by holding excess water and putting integrated river basin management into practice to control water flow and reduce the risk of flooding. In India, flood control necessitates a mix of structural and non-structural solutions, with hydrological models being essential for flood prediction, management, and mitigation. The popular hydraulic modeling program developed by U.S. Army Engineers for River hydraulics, flood levels, and water flow is known as HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center–River Analysis System). HEC-RAS is extensively used in river engineering, urban drainage planning, and flood risk management in India. This paper highlights the developments in hydraulics models during the past ten years (2015–2025) for improved water management in Indian rivers using the HEC-RAC model.