Faced with a sprawling and archaic water network dating back to Victorian times, and added to to Victorian times, and expanded piecemeal over decades, water companies face a steep challenge to meet the demands of homeowners and businesses in the 21st century. A hydraulic model provides a ‘digital twin’ of your physical network, offering a virtual environment in which operators can simulate various conditions and predict outcomes.. By investing in this technology, your network can move from reactive repairs to proactive, data-driven management, strengthening your operational strategy at every level. Let’s look at five of the main benefits of using hydraulic modelling for water distribution systems.
1. Improved Water Quality and Safety
Maintaining water quality is the number one priority for utility operators. Hydraulic modelling helps simulate how water moves throughout your network, identifying areas of low flow or potential stagnation that could compromise water quality. You can also model contamination spread scenarios, informing better emergency preparedness and allowing the development of targeted flushing and chlorination strategies to keep your water supply safe.
2. Enhanced Data Integration and Validation
A powerful hydraulic modelling system will integrate data from multiple sources, including GIS, customer billing systems, and SCADA, as well as asset-based sensor networks. This gives you a single, unified view of the entire water network. But how do you know that the model is accurate or representative? The answer is by deploying a robust system for model maintenance that includes validating the model against live operational data and performing health checks to identify outdated or inconsistent network data. This creates a reliable foundation for all operational and planning requirements, and gives you the confidence that your decisions are based on reliable and up-to-date information.
3. More Effective Operational Management and Reliability
Hydraulic modelling allows operators the capacity to test various hypothetical scenarios such as emergency response, contamination events, or repair planning without any real-world consequences. The system provides the capability, on demand, to simulate the impact of multiple pipe failures during extreme temperatures, the effect of sudden peak demand on water pressure stability, the expected performance of overflow infrastructure during high winter precipitation, and the cost implications of modifying pump operating conditions. This foresight allows better flow and pressure management, improved system controls, , and stronger overall network resilience , as well as being better prepared for worst-case scenarios.
4. Enhanced Planning and Design
With countless repairs and upgrades to spend money on and a finite budget, it’s important to prioritise your capital investment on areas that make the widest and most significant impact. Hydraulic models take the guesswork out of long-term planning and design, identifying future capacity constraints and helping you budget for necessary upgrades. They support strategic capital planning, allowing utilities to design major pipe line projects with the optimal materials, sizes and routes to accommodate future demand. This ensures resources are directed wisely today while reducing risk and optimising expenses tomorrow.
5. Detailed Hydraulic Analysis
At its core, a hydraulic modelling platform provides insight into how your network behaves under a wide range of operating conditions. It allows operators to analyse pipe flows, pressures, velocities and transient conditions in multiple scenarios. This detailed analysis supports the designing and managing of District Metered Areas (DMAs), which helps you develop accurate and relevant operational strategies, and develop leakage reduction strategies e throughout the network.
Find Out More
For more information about hydraulic modelling and the benefits to your water network, please get in touch with one of the specialists at Crowder Consulting today by clicking here, or by calling 0151 453 4580.
