RIBASIM has been developed by Deltares as independent non-profit knowledge institute and covers 35 years of experience in water related water resource management. RIBASIM is a generic software package for simulating the behavior of river basins under various hydrological conditions.

RIBASIM is designed for any analysis which requires the water balance of a basin to be simulated. The resulting water balance provides the basic information on the available quantity of water as well as the composition of the flow at every location and any time in the river basin. RIBASIM provides the means to prepare such balances in required detail, taking into account drainage from agriculture, discharges from industry and the downstream re-use of water. Many output parameters are generated for evaluation of the basin performance.

Considerations related to the RIBASIM software:

• General applicable software which does not require any third-party software.

• Developed by Deltares (previously Delft Hydraulics) since 1985 in the course of many projects worldwide.

• Scalable on local, sub-basin, full basin, multiple basins, country and continent level.

• Includes a graphical interactive map-based user interface to design a node-link network schematization of any river basin.

• Explicicit scenario design: hydrological, climate change, agriculture, socio-economic and water quality.

• Design of demand, supply, infrastructure and operation-based measures.

• Flexible design of strategies (combination of measures).

• User interface includes a framework for analysis.

• Import network based on GIS maps.

• Interactive design of river basin network schematization from map (optionally).

• Data entry based on spreadsheet tool.

• Supports various simulation time step lengths: month, half-month, decade (10 day), week and day.

• No limitation on the size of the node-link network schematization and the length of the simulation period.

• Covers surface water and groundwater supply, demand of all water users, infrastructure and the operation of the infrastructure.

• Allows modelling of irrigation demand on level of crop characteristics, crop plans, irrigation practice and operation of the irrigation infrastructure. 

• Includes an interactive graphical crop plan design tool. 

• Includes advanced irrigation demand, supply, crop yield and production costs model.

• Modelling reservoir operation using flood control, maximum hydro-power generation, firm storage and hedging operation rules based on actual reservoir storage and water allocation priorities of the water users, and event-driven operation rules.

• Modelling variety of sectors and users: agriculture, domestic, municipal and industrial use, aquaculture, livestock (cattle), recreation, nature conservation, environmental flow, transport of pollutants and heat, navigation, hydro-power production, cooling for power production, losses in river reaches and canals from evaporation and seepage, groundwater recharge, water rights, eo.

• Design of time conditional measures into climate change adaptation and transition pathways.

• Allows analysis of scenario and strategies.

• Shows the water balance in various spacious and temporal scale.

• Analysis of results on map, charts and reports.

• Is easy to learn and can be applied in complex basins by governments, universities, consultants and research institutes. Training material is available.

• Is part of the Deltares software ecosystem and is continuously updated according to the broad expertise in Deltares.

RIBASIM is a modelling instrument for river basin planning and management. It has a set of outstanding features which make it a state-of-the-art river basin simulation package. 
RIBASIM is fast and robust. Large and complex river basins have been modelled and simulated with RIBASIM and the effects of various scenarios, measures and strategies have been quantified and visualized. Water management organizations world-wide use it to support their management and planning activities.

Over the past years RIBASIM has been successful applied in interactive sessions with stakeholders to model and analyse results in a collaborative setting. Sharing knowledge and insights improves water stewardship to deal with uncertainties now and in the future.

RIBASIM has a link with the rainfall-runoff model wflow, the groundwater flow model SEAWAT and the detailed water quality process model DELWAQ. A link with the groundwater flow model iMOD/Modflow is available. RIBASIM can be the computational core model in an operational water demand and allocation platform for drought early warning using the Delft-FEWS software.