History and Description of the Mississippi Basin Model,

Abstract

The Mississippi Basin Model, the largest small-scale working model in the world, reproduces the entire drainage basin of the Mississippi River and its tributary system to a horizontal scale of 1:2000 and a vertical scale of 1:100. The model has the appearance of a gigantic relief map with the streams and floodplains molded in concrete in their correct geographic locations. Construction of the model was begun by German prisoners of war in the fall of 1943, was continued by civilian personnel of the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES) after the prisoners were transferred in 1946, and was completed in 1966. The Mississippi Basin Model Board (the group charged with determining policies and programs for development and operation of the model) unanimously agreed that the model has been a very valuable tool in solving many flood-control problems and in providing the answers to many of the questions with regard to the coordinated operation of reservoirs within the basin.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1971
Accession Number
ADA107494

Entities

People

  • John E. Foster

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Civilian Personnel
  • Concrete
  • Construction
  • Drainage Basins
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Flood Control
  • Floods
  • Geography
  • Grids
  • Hydraulic Models
  • Mississippi River
  • Prisoners
  • Prisoners Of War
  • Rivers
  • Topography
  • United States

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Riverine Ecology