Numerous codes are being developed to solve Shallow Water equations. Because
there are used in hydraulic and environmental studies, their capability to
simulate properly flow dynamics is critical to guarantee infrastructure and
human safety. While validating these codes is an important issue, code
validations are currently restricted because analytic solutions to the Shallow
Water equations are rare and have been published on an individual basis over a
period of more than five decades. This article aims at making analytic
solutions to the Shallow Water equations easily available to code developers
and users. It compiles a significant number of analytic solutions to the
Shallow Water equations that are currently scattered through the literature of
various scientific disciplines. The analytic solutions are described in a
unified formalism to make a consistent set of test cases. These analytic
solutions encompass a wide variety of flow conditions (supercritical,
subcritical, shock, etc.), in 1 or 2 space dimensions, with or without rain and
soil friction, for transitory flow or steady state. The corresponding source
codes are made available to the community
(http://www.univ-orleans.fr/mapmo/soft/SWASHES), so that users of Shallow
Water-based models can easily find an adaptable benchmark library to validate
their numerical methods.