Water Quality and System Security

Constituent Analysis
Whether you are developing chlorination schedules or simulating mock contamination events, WaterCAD provides the tools you need to conduct and manage any type of constituent analysis. WaterCAD includes an Engineering Library that allows you to create custom constituents such as chlorine, TDS, VOCs, and temperature, and save them for future use.

Accurately simulate different types of booster stations with source type settings such as flow-paced and mass boosters. You can then precisely model the water quality reaction kinetics by specifying zero- or first-order wall decay reactions and nth order bulk reaction coefficients for constituents.

Source Trace Analysis
As water from multiple sources blends in your system, it can react and lead to a reduction in the aesthetic qualities of the water such as turbidity, taste, or odor. Using source tracing, the cause of these types of problems can be identified, and possible solutions can easily be recommended. With WaterCAD’s source trace analysis capabilities, you can determine the percentage contribution of a source to the total water supplied at every node in the system. This feature enables you to quickly and effectively visualize each source’s zone of influence—providing critical information for any blending or contamination study.

Water Age Analysis
Using the water age analysis simulation in WaterCAD, you can quickly determine the age of water anywhere in the network. All you need is a well-calibrated EPS hydraulic model—no other data is required.

Tank Mixing
Uneven tank mixing can result in zones of older water within the tank, leading to water quality problems in the network. With WaterCAD, you can simulate a wide range of tank mixing behaviors to assist in mitigating tank-related water quality problems.

Vulnerability Assessment and Emergency Planning with WaterSafe™ technology
Use WaterSafe™ technology for simulating potential terrorist attacks and disruptions to the water system, predicting contaminant propagation and concentration, preparing for emergencies, identifying impacted populations, and supporting real-time decision-making

• Select the appropriate valves to close for isolating contamination and develop efficient flushing strategies.
• Determine the reliability of the system in unfavorable conditions such as a power outage or pipe break, and simulate the failure of critical water sources in your system.
• Identify customers who will be impacted by a contamination event.
• Respond to emergencies in real time, predicting the influence of crisis events and assessing the impacts of possible corrective actions.
• Prioritize physical security improvements according to how critical various components are to the functionality and safety of the water system.
 

Calibration Management with Darwin®

Optimizing Your System
Darwin Calibrator is the result of recent groundbreaking advances in genetic-algorithm optimization technology. It enables you to take full control of model calibration to improve your modeling productivity and solution confidence.
Powered by Haestad Methods’ proprietary “MAGICTM” technology (Multi Attribute Genetic Inference Computing), the Darwin Calibrator automatically adjusts pipe roughness, junction demands, and pipe and valve status by quickly determining values of these parameters that will result in the best correlation with field data observations and operational boundary conditions.
Using Darwin, you simply enter confidence factors and estimated ranges for demands and roughness coefficients, pipe and valve status parameters, and known and appropriately located field parameters, and let Darwin do the rest. You then easily guide Darwin to remarkably accurate solutions using the Calibration Manager.
 

Cost Analysis

WaterCAD Pays You Back
• Assess different rehabilitation strategies and capital improvement plans.
• Design pump stations for a system based on the total life-cycle cost of the pump and easily compare them using the Energy Cost Manager.
• Accurately estimate energy costs for constant speed and variable-speed pumps and examine the tradeoffs between energy costs and the capital costs required to improve pump efficiency.
• Realistically emulate PLCs and other pump controllers with logical rule-based controls and evaluate and develop costs for any number of pump control strategies regardless of their complexity.

Capital Cost Analysis
Assess the capital costs associated with the water distribution network including pumps, valves, and storage facilities and recommend future improvements based on both hydraulic and financial impacts. Haestad Methods’ Capital Cost Manager provides a powerful interface for building your own cost database directly within WaterCAD that includes unit cost functions, adjustment factors, and contingencies.

Energy Cost Analysis
The cost of operating pumps can be one of the largest expenses that a utility incurs during normal operations, which highlights the need to identify the most energy-efficient and cost-effective pump scheduling and operational plans. Considering that the annual energy costs for operating a single 1,000 gpm pump can be on the order of $40,000(USD), there is an enormous opportunity to save money on system-wide energy costs. With WaterCAD in place, huge cost savings can be realized by exploring new control strategies before they are implemented.

WaterCAD’s Energy Cost Analysis feature allows you to determine the cost of operating your pumps using any energy tariff.
Haestad Methods’ Energy Cost Manager considers the effects of storage on the cost of running the system.

Variable-Speed Pumping
Through cutting-edge algorithms developed by Haestad Methods, you can now use WaterCAD to truly mimic the operational behavior of variable-speed pumps. WaterCAD’s APEXTM (Automatic Parameter Estimation eXtension) continually adjusts the pump speed to maintain a user-specified condition in the model, such as a constant head at a junction or tank.

Rule-Based Controls
With Rule-Based Controls, you now have unprecedented command over your hydraulic model and the ability to emulate the most complex operational strategies. Automatically control the status of your pipes, pumps, and valves based on any combination of system conditions, including time of day, tank drain and fill times, total system demand, hydraulic grade, flows, and pressures.