Blog – Water Simulation

Crowd funding for the Open Source EPANET project

Elad SalomonsPosted on April 27, 2018 Posted in Announcements, EPANET related — 2 Comments ↓

We need your help!!!

Kobus Van Zyl and Dominic Boccelli, members of the EPANET Steering Committee, just launched a crowd funding campaign for the Open Source EPANET project. The first project that is planned to be supported is for one of the main developers (Elad Salomons, yes, me) to attend and run a workshop at the first combined WDSA/CCWI conference from 23 and 25 July 2018 in Kingston, Ontario.

Here is the full text of the campaign:

EPANET started out as a public-domain hydraulic simulation package for water distribution networks, developed by Dr Lew Rossman at the USEPA. It is widely recognised that EPANET has played an invaluable role in supporting research and practice in the Water Distribution Systems Analysis (WDSA) field.In 2015 the WDSA Standing Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers initiated an open source project for the continued development of EPANET after the retirement of Dr Rossman. For more information about the open source project, see the original project announcement, this editorial in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management and the development project itself on Github.The project has already resulted in the first ever open community release of EPANET (EPANET 2.1).

Developing a software package is not a simple task and the development has been done by a small group of dedicated volunteers. In many cases these volunteers are not academics or students, but work for themselves or small consulting companies and thus have to trade in chargeable time for their work on EPANET.

The aim of this funding campaign is to support the activities of the Open Source EPANET project. The immediate goal is to support key members of the development team to attend international conferences to interact with the WDSA community and run workshops to train community members to contribute to the project.

The first project that we hope to support is for one of the main developers (Elad Salomons) to attend and run a workshop at the first combined WDSA/CCWI conference from 23 and 25 July 2018 in Kingston, Ontario.

This is a call on everybody who uses EPANET, whether for modelling, research or teaching, to support the open source project by donating to this campaign. No amount is too small (or too big 🙂 and all funds received (except the GoGetFunding fee) will be used to support the open source EPANET project. Application of the funds will be done in consultation with the EPANET development team and all spending will be reported in full.

Let’s all get moving and support the open source EPANET project in any way we can! If you or your students can’t contribute to the coding (and even if you can), please support the opens source EPANET volunteers by donating to this campaign.

Xylem acquires Visenti

Elad SalomonsPosted on November 1, 2016 Posted in Announcements — No Comments ↓

During the 2010 WDSA conference in Tucson I met the WaterWiSe@SG team and was impressed with their achievements. Following that conference, I wrote a post titled “WaterWiSe@SG – a huge step towards the Water Smart Grid”. A year later the project’s team established a spin-off company called Visenti based in Singapore. Today Xylem announced the acquisition of Visenti:

In addition, we have completed the acquisition of Visenti, which provides products and services for utilities to optimize their drinking water networks, including in the rapidly growing areas of leak detection, pressure management and water quality monitoring. Visenti’s portfolio is highly complementary to the Sensus offerings, and targets utilities’ growing challenge of managing water loss, known as non-revenue water. This addition will enable us to immediately offer more valuable solutions to our customers. We look forward to integrating their capabilities into Xylem and helping them to scale and grow this business.

Xylem logo

Visenti logo

In short, Visenti developed a low cost, high rate, pressure transients, flows and water quality wireless sensing platform. On top of this platform, a wide range of online and off-line applications were built: real-time leak detection and localization, online hydraulic modelling and simulation, water quality event detection, system operation module, data management system, system assessment and more. Their main products are PascalView^TM, OHMView^TM, DataIntel^TM and LeakIntel^TM which are offered in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, UAE, South Korea, China, Qatar, the UK and other places.

Looking at Xylem’s stock performance over the past few years it is clear they know their business so I’m sure they will be able to use the knowledge and capabilities of Visenti. Leveraging the big-data expertise of Visenti with Xylem recent accusation of Sensus, one of the largest AMR companies, could be one way to go. Analyzing pumps data is also an interesting option.

Since 2011 I have been doing some consultancy work for Visenti. Mainly algorithms development, water networks hydraulic modeling and calibration, water quality and pressure sensor placement, water quality event detection systems, pump optimization and system operations tools and more.

It was an honor working with Visenti’s team and I look forward for our future work together.

Tagged with: visenti, Xylem

First community release of the EPANET toolkit

Elad SalomonsPosted on October 27, 2016 Posted in Announcements, EPANET related, Programming, Water simulation Packages — 8 Comments ↓

It took us just over one year since the announcement of an open source EPANET initiative to release the first community version of the EPANET toolkit (the EPANET engine DLL). This is now version EPANET 2.1.

From the release note:

The last update to the EPANET engine was “Build 2.00.12” in February of 2008. Since that time, a community effort to update and extend the open-source code has emerged. This group has made a number of bug-fixes and API additions that help to improve the EPANET engine for everyone. Version 2.1 was released in July 2016, after 8.5 years.

The new functions (APIs) are:

ENgetaveragepatternvalue – Retrieve the average multiplier value in a time pattern
ENgetstatistic – Get hydraulic simulation statistic
ENgetcoord – Get coordinates (x,y) for a node
ENsetcoord – Set coordinates (x,y) for a node
ENgetpumptype – Get the type of pump
ENgetqualinfo – Get quality analysis information (type, chemical name, units, trace node ID)
ENgetnumdemands – Get the number of demand categories for a node
ENgetbasedemand – Get a node’s base demand for a specified category
ENsetbasedemand – Sets the node’s base demand for a category
ENgetdemandpattern – Get the index of the demand pattern assigned to a node for a category index
ENgetcurve – Get a curve’s properties
ENgetcurveid – Retrieves index of curve with specific ID
ENgetcurvelen – Retrieves number of points in a curve
ENgetcurvevalue – Retrieves number of points in a curve
ENsetcurvevalue – retrieves x,y point for a specific point number and curve
ENsetcurve – Sets x,y values for a specified curve
ENaddcurve – Adds a new curve appended to the end of the existing curves
ENgetheadcurveindex – Retrieves the curve index for a specified pump index
ENgetcurveindex – Retrieves index of curve with specific ID

Performance pmprovements, bug fixes, usage features and more:

API float type is a compile-time option with the EN_API_FLOAT_TYPE definition. Use either float or double – default if left undefined is float to maintain compatibility with 2.0.x
updated hash table algorithm
fixed memory leak when saving output
enables interleaved hydraulic and water quality analysis steps:

[c collapse=”false”]

ENopenH();
ENinitH(0);
ENinitQ(EN_NOSAVE);
do {
ENrunH(&t);
ENrunQ(&qt);
ENnextQ(&qstep);
// collect results
ENnextH(&tstep);
} while (tstep > 0);
ENcloseQ();
ENcloseH();

[/c]

engine code and command-line executable are now in separate implementation files
parameter #define directives are now enumerated values
main header now contains doxygen-compatible comment blocks for auto-generated documentation

Documentation available at wateranalytics.org/EPANET and pre-built binaries for Windows (32 and 64 bits), Mac and Linux can be found on GitHub.

Tagged with: community, epanet, open source

EPANET coordinates conversion service

Elad SalomonsPosted on October 6, 2016 Posted in Announcements, Commercial software — No Comments ↓

After many years of working with EPANET models from all around the world I have developed tools and methods for the conversions of models coordinates systems and now offer an EPANET coordinates conversion service.

EPANET network on Google maps

More information here.

Tagged with: coordinates conversion, epanet, services

Israeli Supreme Court rules that a water utility with an AMR system must notify a customer when irregular consumption is detected

Elad SalomonsPosted on October 6, 2016 Posted in Events & news — 1 Comment ↓

Not smart meters

About ten years ago I had a discussion with the director of one of the largest water utilities in Israel regarding the option to deploy water quality sensors in the distribution network and to set up an event detection system. He said that he would probably wont go ahead with it voluntarily since if the system will alert and he wouldn’t act on it he would be held responsible. I was amazed by his answer especially since he was a civil servant and not the director of a private company (water utilities in Israel are owned by the municipalities). Recently a similar claim was used by another water utility in court.

The indisputable facts: on December 2nd 2012, while planting a tree in their backyard in a northern Israeli town, a family hit their private underground water pipe which started to leak unnoticed in large quantities. A few months earlier the water utility in that town installed a transmitting water meter on the property (what some people call a “smart meter”). 3 days after the leak started, the utility’s AMR (Automated Meter Reading) system alerted that there was a leak in that property. Following that alert the utility sent a letter(!) to the family notifying them about a possible leak. The letter was received on December 16th (two week after the leak started and 11 days after the leak was noticed by the utility). The leak was fixed on the following day. The utility sent the family a bill for 681.4 cubic meters in the sum of 10,040 NIS (about 2,700$).

The utility told the family that they may be entitled to a discount based on a special leaks tariff. The family refused and claimed that the water utility was negligible since it was supposed to alert them quicker by a phone call or a text message and went to court.

Now comes the good part. The water utility argued in court that they have voluntarily installed the AMR system and since they are not obligated by the regulations to install such a system, they should not be held to higher standards than utilities which makes monthly manual meter readings. They also claimed that if the water utilities will be obligated to notify the consumers in such events water utilities would not install such systems. The water utility had other arguments but they were found to be irrelevant or false.

To make a long story short, the Magistrate Court canceled the water bill. The ruling was mainly based on the quality of service regulations for water utilities in Israel. The regulations says that a water utility should check the meter’s reading for high demand compared to the regular water consumption immediately when the readings are received and at least once every billing cycle (regulations are in Hebrew and the translation is mine). The regulations also define what regular consumption is: the consumption in the same period last year. There are three levels of high consumption: high consumption (over 130% of regular demand), irregular consumption (over 150% of regular demand) and very irregular consumption (over 200% of regular demand). The water utility must notify the customer in cases of high consumption and in the case of very irregular consumption the water utility must make reasonable efforts to notify the customer by a phone call or a text message. There was no argument that in this case the leak caused a “very irregular consumption” and the utility failed to notify the customer and by that it was held responsible.

Well, one would think that at this point the water utility would accept the ruling but it didn’t. The utility appealed to the District Court mainly claiming that it is not reasonable to hold it, and other water utilities with an AMR system, to such norms. The District Court dismissed the claim and ruled that the choice to use new technologies which improved the service, even if not obligated to, comes with greater responsibility.

The water utility didn’t give up and requested permission from the Israeli Supreme Court for an appeal using the same arguments and claiming that this case affects the expected standards water utilities are held to. Also claiming again that if the ruling would not be reversed water utilities would be reluctant to use new technologies. The Supreme Court denied the request and explained that if a service provider uses new technologies, even if not obligated to, he is expected to use the information the unique technology provides in a reasonable manner. This was already ruled in other cases which involved new medical technologies. The court also rejected the claim that water utilities would not install such systems since the system already alerted about the possible leak so there is almost no extra cost to notify the customer (I would add that a phone call or a text message is cheaper than sending a snail mail).

Well, now days it is common practice by this water utility, and other water utilities in Israel with AMR systems, to immediately alert customers of a possible leak. It is worth noting that AMR systems in Israel are not very common and water utilities still find it hard to justify these systems costs.

Tagged with: AMR, court, leak

Re-Engineering the user interface of EPANET

Elad SalomonsPosted on November 29, 2015 Posted in EPANET related, Free software — 5 Comments ↓

Two important initiatives started this year. The first is the announcement of the Open Source EPANET project which is currently focused on the EPANET engine (solver). The second is a tender (or solicitation) issued by the USEPA for the “Re-Engineering SWMM and EPANET User Interface Application Software Architectures” (search here for reference number: RFQ-DC-15-00153).

I haven’t seen a formal announcement by the USEPA regarding the “winner” of this bid but according to this press release, AQUA TERRA Consultants got the job:

AQUA TERRA Consultants, a division of RESPEC Consulting & Services, has been selected by the U.S. EPA to re-engineer the user interface application software architectures for two of their urban water simulation tools – the Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) and software for modeling water distribution piping systems (EPANET). The project will focus on the design of a modular and extensible User Interface (UI) application software architecture that will enable deployment of new application features created by EPA, third party developers, and end users employing application “plug-ins.” The new design will make the user interfaces more approachable by the open-source user community and provide a path toward mobile applications

What should we expect (according to the statement of work in the solicitation documents):

The application development framework shall be modern, free and open source.
The framework project must have a strong development roadmap including support for
mobile applications and good developer documentation with examples.
A modular epanet plugins architecture which should encourage development of new features and future expansion of the application.
High level scripting support within the application will allow users to more easily manage input data, drive specialized simulations, analyze output data, and will give users the tools to develop plugins directly within the application itself.
Rebuild of SWMM and EPANET applications using freely available open-source tools.

The SWMM and EPANET user interfaces are expected to be using the following software development architecture:

Platform / Operating System: Desktop application primary target Microsoft Windows; secondary targets Mac OS X, and Linux. Future potential for mobile applications.
Language: C++ / Python; Conform to standard C++ for cross platform compatibility;
Compiler Tool Chain: Clang, GCC, Intel; Python 3.0
Application Development Framework: Qt / PySide or PyQt
Plugin Support: Plugins written in C++ or Python
Scripting Support: Python API for UI and model toolkits

The basic requirements are:

Backwards Compatibility: general user interaction paradigm; input and output file formats
New Functionality: undo/redo support; worksheet style input data display/editing
GIS Integration: data import/export from/to geodatabase; map rendering; input/output data manipulation
Special Features: plugin manager; application scripting support; console plugin (iPython); info graphic style project summary, simulation status, and results display; internationalization support
Help System: Integration with web based user support portal

The award of this work to AQUA TERRA wad made on September 1st 2015 so I would assume that the official starting date of the project is around that time, by the end of September. So when should we expect to see something? Well, the base work is expected to take about one year and should include the following deliverables:

Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP).
Application Features Requirements Document (AFRD).
Software Application Architectural Design.
Minimum Testable Products (MTP) – these are the actual products. “Software code, including that for automated unit and regression testing, shall be developed in an open and transparent manner with frequent “check-ins” into the designated source code management system.” – a proposed schedule of MTPs shall be submitted within 120 days of the project start date.
Testing and delivery of final products.
Computational Engine Support – this section is a bit of a mystery for me. The border line between the UI and the engine is not clear yet.

The USEPA intend to share project documents and will accept public comments on them. As mentioned above, the source code of the project is expected to be open so the community will have access to the source code at all times. I hope everything will go as planed and the users community will play an active role in this process. From the little communication I had with the USEPA personal working on this I feel that we are in good hands!

Tagged with: AQUA TERRA, usepa

AccuWater – EPANET web application

Elad SalomonsPosted on November 28, 2015 Posted in Commercial software, EPANET related — 5 Comments ↓

This is a guest post by Mark Wilson, founder of AccuModel.

Hello readers of the water-simulation blog. I am happy to announce the release of the first version of our first product AccuWater. This is an EPANET2 based water distribution system modeling software implemented as a web application. To help you understand why I would put time and resources into creating such a thing, let me give you a little background.

For the past ten years, I have worked in the water distribution system modeling and master planning industry. Six and one half of those years were spent working for a major modeling software vendor. While working for this vendor, I met with many utilities trying to get useful results from the time and money that they have invested in their model. I made many observations over this time period but two of them stand out to me. First, not every utility or consultant can afford expensive modeling software. Second, not every potential user of a hydraulic model has the patience to learn a full and complex modeling package.

This is where AccuModel comes in, we think that there are many engineers out there that can make use of hydraulic modeling using an existing EPANET based model if there were only a cost effective and simple way to do the basic types of analysis that they are interested in. This is why we have created AccuWater.

Some of the many great things about AccuWater are:

It is simple to use
You can view and edit model data in a table format
You can easily search for model data from any table
It runs from a browser and thus there is no extra software to install
The interface is modern and colorful
Since it runs from a browser, it can be run from a tablet computer that is connected to Wi-Fi or cellular data connection
Computation is not reliant on the user’s system resources, like a fast CPU or lots of memory
You can log into your model from any computer
Google Maps(TM) is used for the map visualization so with that comes street, aerial, topo, and hybrid background as well as Street View
The model is stored in the cloud so you don’t have to worry about where you have stored your model on your local network or worry about losing the model if your hard drive fails
There is a free version
There is a subscription based AccuWater Pro version with more features
There is no initial investment to use the AccuWater Pro version. You get a free seven-day trial before you start getting charged an affordable monthly fee to use all of the features that AccuWater Pro users enjoy

I hope you will take the time to try AccuWater for yourself and see what you think. You can sign up at accuwater.accu-model.com and you can watch the tutorial videos on YouTube.

I have sample models that I can send to those that contact me that are ready to use to try out AccuWater.

Feel free to contact me through our website (accu-model.com) or directly through the AccuWater application to give us feedback. We are in active development of many more great features. If you would like to request or suggest a feature, please contact me.

Tagged with: AccuWater, Mark Wilson

Irrigateplus – EPANET irrigation software

Elad SalomonsPosted on November 3, 2015 Posted in Commercial software, EPANET related — No Comments ↓

This is a guest post by David García, manager of IrrigatePlus.

Irrigateplus is a program based on EPANET that includes, in a single program, all the necessary tools for the design, calculation and analysis of irrigation systems.

Even though IrrigatePlus aims to maintain the original interface of Epanet (so users can take advantage of the tutorials and examples for Epanet on several languages), multiple internal tools have been added with the objective of optimizing the irrigation, the selection of sprinkler type and the management of irrigation areas.

For short, IrrigatePlus has four differentiating elements:

Databases with the specifications for each sprinkler (Max. and min. pressure, pressure-radius function, flow-pressure function, precipitation rate,.)
Design tools (Sprinklers, Irrigation Area, Angle, Orientation,..)
Visualization tools (Irrigated Area, Opacity, Gradient, …)
Calculation Engine (Emission exponents for each sprinkler)

One of its main advantages is its ease of use and its integration with EPANET, which means all its visualization and post-processing tools allow for a complete analysis of the network through the creation of plans, maps, charts and tables.

In the same way, it allows for the listing of used materials, exporting it to a spreadsheet in an easy way (Diameter and length of pipes, sprinkler models, diffusers, nozzles, ..).

IrrigatePlus speeds up such tasks as the election of sprinklers (model, nozzle and angle), the generation of a network model (branched or meshed networks of any size), the planning of irrigation schedules and the interpretation of the results derived from hydraulic simulations.

All this allows for the optimization of the diameter of pipes, the positioning of the valves, the selection of pumping equipment and the uniformity of the irrigation. In short, IrrigatePlus is a great tool helping in selecting and diagnosing the suitability of each of the elements that form an irrigation network (pumps, connections, valves, sprinklers, piping,..).

IrrigatePlus is available in two formats: a free version designed for testing the characteristics of the program without any limitation (it includes a set of default sprinklers); and a paid version with access to the commercial catalogs of major sprinkler manufacturers worldwide.

For more information, visit the web site of IrrigatePlus (www.irrigateplus.com).

Tagged with: IrrigatePlus, irrigation