SWMM5, InfoSWMM

Indiana’s Largest Utility Looks to Innovyze for Smart Water and Wastewater
Modeling and Management

Citizens Water Chooses Industry-Leading InfoWater and InfoWorks ICM 

Broomfield, Colorado USA, December 4, 2012 — Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for wet infrastructure, today announced that Citizens Water of Indianapolis, Indiana, has standardized on Innovyze software for advanced water and wastewater modeling. The comprehensive software selection includes InfoWater for comprehensive ArcGIS-centric (Esri, Redlands, CA) water system modeling and InfoWorks ICM for dynamic sanitary sewer system modeling. The decision helps solidify Innovyze’s position as a leading provider of smart water network modeling and management solutions to the world’s largest cities and utilities.

Citizens Water is a nonprofit integrated water and wastewater utility established in 2011 through the acquisition of systems from the City of Indianapolis. The utility provides water service to more than 300,000 households and wastewater services to more than 230,000 households. “Citizens Water is dedicated to continuous system improvement that provides the greatest positive benefit for our ratepayers,” said Elena Rubchinskaya, Manager of System Modeling at the utility. “InfoWorks ICM and InfoWater give us the perfect blend of powerful analytical features coupled with ease of use. With this combination, our engineering team can simultaneous manage dozens of design improvement scenarios, prioritize rehabilitation, and optimize current operations — ultimately enriching our customer service while continuing to safeguard the environment.”

Built atop ArcGIS, InfoWater seamlessly integrates sophisticated analytics, systems dynamics, and optimization functionality directly within the ArcGIS setting. The InfoWater product suite comes equipped with everything water utility owner–operators need to best design, operate, secure, and sustain their distribution systems — from fire flow and water quality simulations, valve criticality, and energy cost analysis to pressure zone management and advanced Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm optimization. In addition, the software serves as a base platform for advanced smart network modeling, operational, capital planning, and asset management extensions. These critical applications include IWLive (real-time operations and security), InfoWater UDF (unidirectional flushing), CapPlan (risk-based capital planning), InfoMaster and InfoMaster Mobile (asset integrity management and condition assessment), InfoWater MSX (multispecies, temperature, and particle transport/deposition modeling), InfoWater BTX (event/particle backtracking), InfoSurge (surge/transient analysis), and Sustainability(carbon footprint calculation).

A hallmark of InfoWorks ICM is its dynamic integration of one-dimensional hydrodynamic simulation of flows in rivers, open channels, and pipe networks with two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulation of surface flooding in the urban environment and river floodplain. This industry-leading software provides a powerful solution for simultaneously modeling belowground and aboveground elements of catchments to accurately represent all flow paths and improve understanding of the processes occurring in the holistic environment. The software also takes into account interactions of natural and man-made environments and effectively simulates the water quality impact of polluting runoff and effluent from urban areas. Such advanced capabilities greatly enhance wastewater utilities’ ability to predict flood risks; support cost-effective drainage design and management; develop online urban flooding forecasts; conceive and evaluate sound and reliable urban catchment strategies such as storm sewer separation, active real-time control, and provision of adequate additional storage; and improve the operation of any drainage system.

A sophisticated tool for importing, tracking, and auditing large amounts of highly complex data, InfoWorks ICMfacilitates the development of cost-effective, innovative solutions to engineering challenges and fosters a complete understanding of the processes involved. Multiple simulations can be scheduled across a pool of workstations with results returned to a single location, making for highly effective use of computing resources.

“We work very hard every day to create and support the most powerful and advanced water utility business analytics technology possible,” said J. Erick Heath, P.E., Innovyze Vice President, Director of Americas Operations. “Citizens Water’s selection of Innovyze is unequivocal confirmation that our products are performing at the highest level and helping engineers design, manage, secure and operate sustainable wet infrastructure.”

Innovyze Releases PressureWatch:
Breakthrough Real-Time Network Monitoring and Anomaly Detection Software
for Smarter Water Utilities

Next Generation Release Raises Bar for Smart Water Network Management Software, Delivers Economic, Operational and Environmental Benefits 

Broomfield, Colorado USA, November 27, 2012 — Innovyze, a leading global innovator of wet infrastructure modeling and simulation software and technologies, today announced the release of PressureWatch for drinking water distribution systems. This revolutionary real-time water network monitoring and anomaly detection software extends the utility of smart network modeling to include SCADA data acquisition and predictive forecasting and condition assessment capabilities. It will change the way water utilities around the world use pressure and flow data and network modeling to obtain real-time identification and warning of network performance problems, leaks, breaks, loss of system integrity, and other operational inefficiencies. It also empowers them to foresee and pre-empt future network failures.

Globally, water demand is rising, resources are diminishing, aging water infrastructures are rapidly deteriorating, and the problems of water loss and leakage are relentless. In the U.S. alone, about 237,600 water main breaks occur every year. An estimated seven billion gallons of drinking water are wasted every day — a staggering 1.7 trillion gallons annually.

PressureWatch gives water utility owners and operators the unprecedented ability to visualize and assess their network hydraulic performance in real time and compare current network dynamics with historic data — allowing them to manage their water networks in a more effective and highly proactive way. By enabling them to rapidly detect water-usage deviations, sudden pressure and flow changes and anomalous hydraulic conditions, this state-of-the-art predictive technology puts them at a tremendous advantage in managing their water supply and distribution systems more efficiently and taking rapid, informed actions to minimize water leakage, reduce pipe break frequency, save energy, lower operational and maintenance expenses, enhance water quality, optimize system performance and integrity, increase sustainability, improve service to customers, and ensure regulatory compliance.

Designed for online applications with existing SCADA systems and pressure and flow meters and sensors,PressureWatch automatically reads and analyzes incoming real-time field data, instantly updates the calibrated network model and predicts hydraulic behavior. It then compares this data with natural variation of historical data (based on time of day, day of the week, season of the year, etc.) and uses advanced mathematical, statistical and network solving techniques to pinpoint the onset of anomalous hydraulic events operators can evaluate and act on.

PressureWatch can not only detect anomalous hydraulic conditions resulting from pipe rupture, leak and break incidents, but spot unexpected “normal” events like sensor malfunction and equipment failure. It can also differentiate anomalous events from background variability, minimize the number of missed detections, and compute and report the likelihood of false alarms and screen them out using advanced pattern matching and recognition algorithms. These are fundamental advances in how effectively water utilities operators monitor the operational efficiency and integrity of their networks and take remedial action the moment breaches are detected, quickly mitigating adverse public health and economic impacts. Operators can now make better predictions and smarter decisions, and target more effective interventions. 

Easy to learn and use, PressureWatch is available as a stand-alone Windows program that runs on nearly any computer or as a complementary module of IWLive. Unlike complex “software as a service” (SaaS) solutions, it can be up and running in just a few minutes within the controlled security of the utility’s local computer. At the same time, PressureWatch’s unique integration with network modeling and GIS enables water operators to quickly identify viable solutions (e.g., locate the appropriate valves to close to isolate a main break and determine affected customers) and make decisions on the basis of reliable predictive analytics and system dynamics rather than intuition. These critical differences mark the first time water utilities of all sizes are able to use geospatial network modeling to readily optimize network maintenance and management securely and at very low cost. They also greatly enhance utilities’ ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies.

“PressureWatch is an invaluable advance in water distribution network operations, maintenance and management,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F.ASCE, President and Chief Operating Officer of Innovyze. “It will greatly aid water utilities worldwide in improving the efficiency and integrity of their distribution systems and ensuring more reliable operations at maximum cost savings. Since day one, our mission has been to share powerful product development capabilities with the smart water network modeling community and foster its expansion. This new software is a significant leap — one that greatly enhances these experts’ ability to reduce operational and energy costs, extend the lifetime of their assets, improve customer service, conserve valuable resources, and maximize the integrity of their networks’ physical, hydraulic and water quality.PressureWatch exemplifies our ongoing commitment to delivering superior value to our customers who manage, operate and sustain safe, reliable drinking water distribution systems. Innovyze is very proud to offer this groundbreaking new power tool to our clients.”