EU Sovereignty Score
Self-hosted / open sourceCAD & EngineeringHeadquarters: US

HEC-RAS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

HEC-RAS (River Analysis System) is software for hydraulic calculations on rivers and channels. According to the project site it supports one-dimensional steady flow, one- and two-dimensional unsteady flow, sediment transport, stormwater pipe network modelling and water quality and temperature modelling. It is aimed at hydraulic engineers and public authorities. HEC-RAS is a desktop application for 64-bit Windows 10/11; version 7.0.1 is also available with compute engines for Linux.

HEC-RAS is developed by the Hydrologic Engineering Center of the US Army Corps of Engineers, a US federal agency. The program is free of charge and, according to the download page, its use is not restricted, but it is not open source: the site names no open-source licence. The centre gives support only to users within the Corps. The software runs locally on your own computer, and as far as the site shows, the developers offer no cloud service for it.

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Sovereignty score
55 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    No hosting in Europe (US)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
    Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
    Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 14, 2026
Headquarters
US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision
Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Data hosting
Self-hosted, e.g. in US (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source
NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant
NoVendor-stated
Category
CAD & Engineering
Type
Product
Website
hec.usace.army.mil ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to HEC-RAS

The European alternatives to HEC-RAS come from our knowledge base of over 8,400 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

92 European CAD & Engineering vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with HEC-RAS

HEC-RAS is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

HEC-RAS runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

HEC-RAS is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs HEC-RAS together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to HEC-RAS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to HEC-RAS include ACCA software, ALLPLAN and AUCOTEC Engineering Base. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to HEC-RAS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to HEC-RAS include Bforartists and Blender. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is HEC-RAS GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

HEC-RAS is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 14, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

In the changelog

Earlier changes to this page, as listed in the public changelog.

Digital sovereignty in CAD & Engineering

CAD & Engineering: Computer-aided design, 3D modelling and engineering simulation software. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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8 European alternatives to HEC-RAS — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score