Water Simulation Packages (WSP)

With WebEPANET you can build an EPANET INP file on the web, run the model, see the map and even see the results.

I’m not sure if anyone will find it useful

See an example here or try it yourself here.

A new release of the DC Water Design Extension is available from:

http://dcwaterdesign.sourceforge.net

The DC Water Design Extension is a free ArcView 3.x extension that integrates EPANET with ArcView.

The changes:

* Bug fixes especially to the start menu links

* Three new functions: Split Model, Merge Model, Extract Model

I have mentioned the EPANET toolkit several times before but didn’t post any information about it yet. The following info is from the toolkit readme file:

EPANET is a program that analyzes the hydraulic and water quality behavior of water distribution systems. The EPANET Programmer’s Toolkit is a dynamic link library (DLL) of functions that allows developers to customize EPANET’s computational engine for their own specific needs. The functions can be incorporated into 32-bit Windows applications written in C/C++, Delphi Pascal, Visual Basic, or any other language that can call functions within a Windows DLL. The Toolkit DLL file is named EPANET2.DLL and is distributed with EPANET. The Toolkit comes with several different header files, function definition files, and .lib files that simplify the task of interfacing it with C/C++, Delphi, and Visual Basic code.

The freeware FireFlow utility was written using the EPANET toolkit.

For more information and download see EPANET web page.

Back in May 2001, Lewis Rossman, author of EPANET, released a small utility to convert dxf files to EPANET format. After a little time he announced that the EPA will not continue to distribute and support the utility.

A few days ago I found the file in my old computer and thought that people may find it useful. So here is a short description form the utility manual and a download link:

“DXF2EPA is a Windows utility program that converts a line drawing of a pipe network stored in Autodesk’s DXF file format into an input data file that can be read by the EPANET water distribution system analysis program. It converts all of the line and polyline elements in selected layers of the DXF drawing into a set of pipes and junctions for EPANET, with all coordinates and vertex points intact. Additional elements, such as reservoirs, tanks, pumps, and valves, have to be added to the EPANET model by hand. Although the conversion program can compute pipe lengths if so desired, other network data, such as junction elevations and demands, and pipe diameters and roughness values have to be edited within EPANET after the converted file is loaded.”

Download dxf2epa.zip (~147 KB)

Manuel López-Ibáñez, currently at the School of the Built Environment of Napier University in Edinburgh (UK), adapted the EPANET Toolkit version 2.00.10 to GNU/Linux.

A number of new features were added:

• Calculation of pump switches
• Saves time of day (in seconds) when a pump changes its status. The vector of pump scheduling is obtained using ENgetlinkvalue()
• ENgetnodevalue() can return the initial (EN_INITVOL) and current volume (EN_VOLUME) of a tank.
• ENgetcount() returns the number of pumps and the number of reservoirs in the network.
• When ENgetcount(EN_CONTROLCOUNT, &count), a control may be added dynamically calling ENsetcontrol() with cindex = count + 1

New toolkit functions:

• ENgettotalenergycost() : calculates total energy cost per pump plus demand cost.
• ENgetpumpswitches() : number of switches of a pump.
• ENaddleveltrig() : adds rule with the following format
  IF SYSTEM CLOCKTIME >= start_time (in seconds)
AND SYSTEM CLOCKTIME < stop_time (in seconds)
AND TANK id(tank_index) LEVEL [BELOW|ABOVE] level
THEN PUMP id(pump_index) STATUS IS status
• ENgetminstoptime() : returns the shortest time interval (in seconds) that a certain pump was not active.
• ENgettankindex() and ENgetpumpindex() : allow to find a pump or tank without knowing its id or index.
• ENaddpattern() adds a new pattern to the database.

This version is highly experimental but Manuel is doing a serious effort to document the changes. He is using a Control Version System (CVS) to keep track of the development, so this version is open to contributions from anyone. Manuel is hoping to obtain feedback in the form of code, testing, reports, acknowledge or just complains.

For more information, and download, please see Manuel López-Ibáñez web page.

From the Perf-Q web site:

Performance-Q – Perf-Q for short – is a water quality model applicable to drinking water transmission and distribution systems. It is based on an event-driven advection and mixing model, and includes the capability to simulate the propagation and transformation of physico-chemical and microbiological parameters throughout water networks.

Perf-Q uses Epanet standard script input files to perform a complete hydraulic and water quality extended-period simulation. It models chlorine (free and combined), suspended bacteria, organic matter and travel time, taking account of such ambient variables as pH, temperature and pipe biofilm load. The event-driven Lagrangean advection and mixing model provides a basis for taking account of all such parameters and variables simultaneously and model their transformation taking into consideration both their inter-relationships and the influence of hydraulic variables such as flow velocity.

For a free download and a manual see Perf-Q web site.

I have been working for some time now on a new network model for a large city with population of about 280,000. The network layout was received from the municipality in AutoCad format. The main problem with this file is that it was not built with a water distribution model perspective. The file is built from many polylines that intersects with no junctions (nodes) to connect them. In some cases lines that should connect do not. In other cases lines that should not be connected are connected.

I’m using the free ArcView extension for EPANet called GISRed to import the AutoCad file and convert it to an INP EPANet format. GISRed was developed by Hugo Bartolín and directed by Professor Fernando Martinez both from the Research Group of Hydraulic Networks and Pressurized Systems (REDHISP) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV). See GISRed home page.

One of my main problems was that after I imported the layout to the INP file I realized that since the poor shape of the AutoCad file my network was disconnected in many places. Going over the entire network, link by link and node by node, is a tedious job. The solution was found once again within GISRed. A tool called ‘Connectivity’. It does a simple thing. It colors each subset of the network in different color and allows the user to see exactly which parts are disconnected.

Continue Reading »
Network connectivity using GISRed

I have been asked several times for the older version of EPANET (version 1.1e). It turns out that Prof. Fernando Marti­nez from Valencia (www.redhisp.upv.es) kept the installation file. So here it is…

Download EPANET version 1.1e here

Steffen Macke has announced a new release of the DC Water Design Extension.

The DC Water Design Extension is a FREE Extension to ESRI’s ArcView GIS software. The DC Water Design Extension integrates the EPANET 2.00 hydraulic modeling software with ArcView.

The changes in this version are:

* INP file import is handling virtual lines now. Function robustness has been improved and error messages are displayed in ArcView.

* More robust “Create Missing Junctions” function.

* Updated documentation.

* New installer interface.

* Bug fixes for patterns, help file integration, result import.

The new release is available from the DC Water Design Extension website.

The following information was received from Professor JE (Kobus) van Zyl (Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at the University of Johannesburg):

OOTEN (Object-Oriented Toolkit for EPANET) was developed to provide the EPANET Programmers Toolkit functionality in a way that better suits object-oriented programming. There are many advantages to object-oriented programming such as ease of developing, checking, expanding, sharing and maintaining programming code.

OOTEN was mainly developed to support our own research efforts in the modeling of water distribution systems, but is made available free of charge to the wider research and modeling community.

OOTEN has all the functionality of the EPANET Programmers Toolkit, but also expands the functionality of the EPANET Programmers Toolkit, for instance to handle Curves. Work is underway to extend the functionality of OOTEN further.

OOTEN is provided as a collection of standard C and C++ source code files (.c, .cpp and .h files) and uses the EPANET source code directly. In some instances, functions were added to the EPANET source code to support for the expanded functionality of OOTEN. However, the existing EPANET functions were not amended and should thus work normally.

http://general.rau.ac.za/civil/wrg/ooten.htm