Real Time Analysis of Water Supply and Water Distribution Systems

Linking a hydraulic model to telemetry systems allows for an integrated simulation of hydraulic, water quality and economic parameters and is of growing interest to water system operators and owners. Coupling a mathematical hydraulic and water quality model to a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system allows the model to be calibrated and validated in real-time with data obtained by the SCADA system. Using this integrated approach to modeling, pressure and flow conditions in the water distribution network can be monitored in an automated fashion, and economic parameters can be evaluated in parallel to the hydraulic and water quality parameters, enabling their optimization. This approach also allows the operator to see how the entire system is operating, instead of relying on the feedback from a few SCADA sensors placed in the network, thus allowing for any breakdown in the network to be readily identified, evaluated, and rectified. This modeling approach also assists the operator in contingency planning to meet the EPA requirements for water security emergency action plans and determining the most appropriate response to unusual operating conditions. The state of art of the available couplings between a hydraulic model and a SCADA system, as well as the experience from an existing implementation is discussed in this paper.