The BWCN calls for teams/individuals from academia, consulting firms, and utilities to propose a calibration methodology and apply it to a real water distribution system.

The new battle will be part of the upcoming WDSA 2010 conference to be held September 12-15, 2010 in Tucson. For details please see the battle page at the conference web site or download the information package below.

Files for the Battle of the Water Calibration Networks (BWCN)

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Excel to EPANet by Oliver Diaz

Both the INP and dxf file are created in the same folder of the excel file.

Web site: http://www.epanet.de.tf

Download: exceltools.zip

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Post tags: autocad, epanet, excel

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Pressure gauge at home garden showing 9 bars

According to the guide line the maximum pressure should not exceed about 60 or 65 meters (and that is also very high!). When we bought the house, a few years back, I installed a pressure reducing device and set it to 35 meters (I get no complaints from my girls).

Pressure reducing device near the water meter set to 35m

A block down the hill from my house the city installed about two years ago a set of pressure reducing valves. During the construction I took the following (bad) pictures:

Pressure reducing valves

Pressure upstream of the pressure reducing valves (9 bars)

Pressure downstream of the pressure reducing valves (4 bars)

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Conference venue: Hilton El Conquistador Golf and Tennis Country Club (www.hiltonelconquistador.com)

Themes and Topics
Several emerging areas associated with water distribution will be underscored:

• WDS as a microbiological system
• Water security
• Sustainable WDS design/operation using
• the triple bottom line/ Water reuse/dual distribution networks design

Further, a unique holistic perspective of contaminant intrusions including detection, source identification, and response will be highlighted through a series of sessions. We intend to bring together engineers and modelers with sensor developers and utilities to provide better understandings of the issues, needs and
capabilities that can be used to protect consumers. In addition to the theme areas, additional conference themes are listed below.

See conference website for session topics.

• WDS as a microbiological system
• Contaminant intrusion and water security
• Sustainable WDSs
• Network Models
• Network Vulnerability
• Network Hydraulics
• Water Use
• Network Water Quality
• Leakage
• Field Work
• Asset Management
• Mixing and dispersion

Submit an abstract at: http://openconf.engr.arizona.edu/wdsa2010

Contact the organizing committee at wdsa2010@email.arizona.edu

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The same museum show an animation of the story of the New-York water system.

Liquid Assets:

Liquid Assets, a ninety-minute documentary, tells the story of essential infrastructure systems: water, wastewater, and stormwater. These systems — some in the ground for more than 100 years — provide a critical public health function and are essential for economic development and growth. Largely out of sight and out of mind, these aging systems have not been maintained, and some estimates suggest this is the single largest public works endeavor in our nation’s history.

See the trailer:

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MWH Soft, based in Broomfield, Colorado, U.S. and Wallingford Software, based in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, U.K. are both leading providers of hydraulic modeling software to water and wastewater utilities around the world.  The combined firm will be able to provide a full suite of software products geared toward hydraulics and hydrology.

“The joining of these companies allows us to add another dimension to our product offering,” says Dr. Paul Boulos, President of MWH Soft.  “By combining two companies with a reputation for excellence in the modeling industry, we will be able to address the full needs of our clients globally.  We are excited to work together with Wallingford Software.”

“This is a tremendous opportunity to expand our service offerings for our clients, as well as expand into new geographies,” says Andy Brown, Wallingford Software European Operations Director. “We are looking forward to this new frontier.”

The second is the announcement by AutoDesk of the acquisition of certain assets from BOSS International:

Autodesk, Inc., a world leader in 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, has announced the acquisition of certain assets from BOSS International, Inc. to further expand its water resources analysis capabilities for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. StormNET for stormwater management analysis, RiverCAD for floodplain analysis, and WaterNET for water distribution analysis will be more closely integrated with Autodesk’s model-based design solutions, including AutoCAD Civil 3D, to help engineers streamline workflows, reduce errors and boost productivity.

The deal by AutoDesk sounds exiting. In the past few months I was straggling to export a very large water network from AutoCAD to EPANet. I know that most of the water simulation packages today do have an interface to AutoCAD but when it is integrated by AutoDesk it should work even better.

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WaterWall™ is a revolutionary end-to-end water security management system, designed to give decision-makers and water security operators an unprecedented level of decision-making confidence in the event of a water crisis. From prevention and detection to intelligent response and recovery through automatic procedure scenarios, WaterWall™ dramatically improves the speed, reliability and quality of responses vital to successful water security management.

An important part of the WaterWall is something called the BlueBox which is an Event Detection System (EDS). In WWS’s web site there is no information of how this EDS works. Fortunately, I attended a one day conference about SCADA systems held by Lead Control. It turns out that Lead is the developer of the BlueBox module. From bit and pieces of information I’m able to give you the basic algorithm running it all. Please note that this is my understanding of the algorithm and may not truly reflect it in detail.

For the explanation I will be using data sets from the CANARY distribution which is the EPA’s event detection software. The data set includes a time series of six parameters: Cl2, PH, Temperature, Turbidity, TOC and Conductivity.

Step 1 – Normalization

Since every measured parameter has its own units and range all of the readings have to normalized. There are more than one way to normalize data so I have selected to normalize each data set using its mean and standard deviation to obtain a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. This is done for the selected moving time window. As we steps through each new time step, the oldest data point is removed from the window, the most recent data point is added to the window and the data in the new window is normalized again to create a new mean and standard deviation.

Step 2 – Calculate points distance

At each point in time we have a set of the six parameters. Each of these sets represents a point in a six dimensional space (like x, y and z in three dimensions). The Euclidean distance between each point to all of the others may be calculated.

Step 3 – Plot the frequency curve of the distances

Once we have the distances calculated we can easily plot its frequency curve as shown in the following figure:

Step 4 – wait for the next reading

Now we are ready for the next data set to come from the SCADA system. Once a new set of the six parameters arrives we move the history window one time step ahead and calculate the distance of the new point to the points in the history window. And again we plot the distances frequencies on top of the previous curve:

Since the point is “normal”, its frequency distribution is “normal”, meaning its similar to the history distribution. But when an event is detected the new distribution may look like so:

It is clear that the new point’s distance frequency is “far” from the normal distribution. Hence, an event.

Conclusion

The algorithm described here is very simple and that is its beauty. I have written its implementation in about an hour but in order to make it an online module a lot of work is needed. Once developed it may be able to do a number of things:

• identify abnormal behavior.
• identify normal but unusual behavior.
• identify a parameter that is causing the abnormal behavior.
• the system may function with one or more parameters missing.

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Post tags: bluebox, eds, event detection system, features, waterwall, whitewater security

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Water supply to Chifeng’s new city centre, a 17-square km area with 58,000 people, was contaminated by an overflow of rainwater last week and test results showed an excessively high count of bacteria, including coliforms and salmonella.

Tap water has not been cut off, but the city government has warned residents not to drink from the tap and has since Tuesday sent water wagons to carry clean water to all communities in the area at least three times a day, the health department spokesman said.

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Post tags: bacteria, china, coliforms, pollution, salmonella, tap water

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Weiss got a few irrelevent fact wrong:

In Israel, the pumps at the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), its largest reservoir, were exposed above the water level, rendering pumping impossible

This is not true. As I write this post the pumps at Sapir pumping station at Lake Kinneret are working. It will take some time before the water level will drop below the needed suction head.

Water, rather than land, could form the basis of an agreement between Israel and Syria, revolving in part around the disputed Golan Heights, the source of more than 55 percent of Israel’s fresh water.

I don’t have the exact number but I’m sure its well below 55%. I would be surprised if its more than 20%.

As I see it, the best way to solve the region water problem is with sea water desalination. The cost of one cubic desalinated sea water had drop to about 50 cents in the last Hadera bid. A series of plant in Israel, Gaza and Akaba (Jordan) may be the answer.

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From the wb site:

TheWaterChannel brings together several strands: insights in today’s water challenges, multimedia expertise and a passion for better water management and better water services for a growing world. Apart from the website, TheWaterChannel is a repository of visual water material and a media facility. TheWaterChannel provides the following services:

• Hosting of videos on www.thewaterchannel.tv and their active promotion through local broadcasts, social media, real-time announcements and linkage to special target groups
• Media management – management of video material within organizations, converting and processing (voice over, trailers and others), broadcasting and dissemination of new and old material
• Theme development – bringing together videos on special themes, adding supplementary material and special activities to bring the theme to the attention of a large audience
• Support to awareness and educational campaigns and events – prepare background material, provide interactive services, live-streaming and others
• Special productions – developing special videos or communication packages as well also video documentation and fact-finding using a network of contacts
• Off-line services – compilation DVDs for educational purposes and others, where on-line access is inconvenient

Here is an example. In West Virginia critics warn public health and safety are threatened by coal waste from power plants that is stored in hundreds of slurry ponds or injected underground:

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