Grantee Research Project Results
2018 Progress Report: A Sustainable Center for Crowd-Sourced Water Infrastructure Modeling
EPA Grant Number: R835950Center: Gulf Coast HSRC (Lamar)
Center Director: Ho, Tho C.
Title: A Sustainable Center for Crowd-Sourced Water Infrastructure Modeling
Investigators: Hodges, Ben R. , Pechacek, Linda D , Barrett, Michael E. , Cleveland, Theodore G. , Ames, Daniel P. , Rowney, A. Charles , Urbonas, Ben , Berglund, Emily , Leite, Fernanda
Current Investigators: Hodges, Ben R. , Cleveland, Theodore G. , Barrett, Michael E. , Ames, Daniel P. , Leite, Fernanda , Berglund, Emily , Urbonas, Ben , Brashear, Bob , Rowney, A. Charles
Institution: The University of Texas at Austin , Urban Watersheds Research Institute , Texas State University , Brigham Young University , North Carolina State University
Current Institution: Brigham Young University , The University of Texas at Austin , North Carolina State University , Texas Tech University , Urban Watersheds Research Institute
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2021 (Extended to August 31, 2023)
Project Period Covered by this Report: September 1, 2017 through August 31,2018
Project Amount: $3,999,803
RFA: National Center for Sustainable Water Infrastructure Modeling Research (2014) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Water , Water Quality
Objective:
Project: Extending the capabilities of EPANET user interface with plugin tools.
Extending the capabilities of EPANET user interface with plugin tools. Simulation of water distribution systems is crucial for the planning, management, operations, and control of municipal water systems. EPANET has been extensively used in a range of design, operation, and management problems that require hydraulic and water quality simulations. Multiple demand conditions, planning scenarios, and various computational methods for integrating with external data sources and programming tools are common challenges to water community that are not directly addressed in the current EPANET software. The US EPA has recently focused on developing an open source modular and extensible user interface, which allows plug-in and scripting support, such that new applications can be integrated and shared within the EPANET environment. In this study, we develop and test the new plugin environment compatible with the new EPANET user interface (UI).
Project: Exploring the Operational Effects of Gentrification on Water Networks
Gentrification can have a negative impact on the operation of the water network -- unless operational adjustments are made corresponding to changing human-infrastructure interactions. A pump upgrade, if existing pumps working at full capacity, would be required. Utilities, which often anticipate changes in the network due to total population increases, would also benefit from an assessment of human-infrastructure interactions such as that occur with gentrification
Project: On-line implementation of models for training
Develop and deploy a software-as-a-service implementation of EPANET/SWMM for on-line access and running of the codes for training purposes.
Project: Improved hydraulic network solver for SWMM
Develop and automated calibration tool for SWMM
Project: Outreach to the SWMM and EPANET communities
Build the foundations for a sustainable community of model developers and users
Project: Community web portal and model repository
Develop a web-centered community for SWMM and EPANET
Progress Summary:
Extending the capabilities of EPANET user interface with plugin tools.
To test the new plugin environment of EPANET UI, two plugins were developed in Python scripting language: (1) optimal network design using genetic algorithms and (2) integration of the Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) developed by Sandia National Labs for pressure driven analysis. The EPANET user can add the new plugins to the main EPANET UI screen and select to solve the optimal design problem using genetic algorithms optimization approach. additionally, the user can choose to perform the default demand-driven hydraulic simulation currently implemented in EPANET or choose to perform the pressure-driven hydraulic simulation, which is offered by the WNTR simulation toolkit.
Exploring the Operational Effects of Gentrification on Water Networks
Gentrification can have a negative impact on the operation of the water network -- unless operational adjustments are made corresponding to changing human-infrastructure interactions. A pump upgrade, if existing pumps working at full capacity, would be required. Utilities, which often anticipate changes in the network due to total population increases, would also benefit from an assessment of human-infrastructure interactions such as that occur with gentrification
On-line implementation of models for training
a 3rd party application layer to get EPANET and SWMM to run on an ARM7 machine. This activity is exploratory work to allow for a NCIMM built/managed data center to serve worling instances of EPANET/SWMM with the GUI intact using VNCserver. Works as proof of principal, but certain graphics elements cause the implementation to crash. We suspect the cause is limitation in the application layer -- the company that sold the application layer is out of business. RealVNC (a different 3rd party) was the service used to broker the VNC connections -- this worked quite well, and their annual enterprise fee is reasonable. Pursuant to the objective, we built several web-based interfaces as experiments to explore the software-as-a-service goal to support the training mission. All these worked, but still take too much user knowledge to implement routinely. The main value of these exercises was to develop meaningful ways to handle the required file systems for different users.
Review of WDSA water security
This research completed a comprehensive review of modeling and methodological techniques that have been developed to enhance water distribution security in collaboration with leaders in this field. The review groups studies based on their contribution to management of contamination threats, physical threats, interconnected infrastructure threats, and cybernetic threats. Modeling studies are mapped to five emergency management activities, including risk assessment, mitigation, emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.
Improved hydraulic network solver for SWMM
A genetic algorithm was developed to provide automated calibration of SWMM. The routine first represents the catchment network as a directed graph object using the NetworkX python package for flexibility in handling real-world observed data availability. Once the calibratable subset of the system is identified, a multi-objective, genetic algorithm (modified Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II: NSGA-II) estimates the Pareto front for the objective functions within the feasible performance space.
Outreach to the SWMM and EPANET communities
The Center sponsored two community forums (EPANET and SWMM) to obtain feedback from the community on issues and priorities in the development of improvements to the models. In addition, we have conducted training sessions for the models through the our collaboration with the Urban Watersheds Research Institute (UWRI).
Community web portal and model repository
Prototype development is underway for of NCIMM website and community user portal to support software and training for SWMM and EPANET models. We are developing a cyber-infrastructure back-end to allow model sharing and analyses.
Future Activities:
Extending the capabilities of EPANET user interface with plugin tools
We are continuing to develop better hydraulic models for simulating hydraulic and quality conditions in water distribution systems.
Exploring the Operational Effects of Gentrification on Water Networks
None
On-line implementation of models for training
The exercise to repeat the experiment on native x86-64 architecture is underway. If the fault that occured in the ARM7 machines vanishes, then will expand this service and prepare a demonstration site for limited users (~25 concurrent connections) at a future training camp.Complete the x86-64 experiments. Assuming sucessful, obtain a small collection of x86-64 SBC to build a small data center and a RealVNC enterprise service. Write a user manual for remote users to use the service. Arrange to spend a small portion of a training class to demonstrate and test the system with trainees.
Review of WDSA water security
Manuscript to be submitted to Journal of Environmental Engineering
Improved hydraulic network solver for SWMM
The new derivation is being used to test a new form of discrete model (manuscript in development) and adapt the method to a Fortran 2008 coarray code for parallelization.
Outreach to the SWMM and EPANET communities
We will continue to develop community relationships to build sustainable open-source collaborations for the future of SWMM and EPANET.
References:
Publications
Hodges, B.R., “Conservative finite-volume forms of the
Saint-Venant equations for hydrology
and urban drainage,”
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussion, submitted Jun. 2018.
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2018-242
Presentations
Arctur, D. and Rowney, A.C., “The National Center for
Infrastructure Modeling and
Management – Data Management as a
Fundamental Driver”, OGC TC – Smart Cities – St.
Johns,
Newfoundland, 29 June, 2017.
Arctur, D. and Rowney, A.C., “The National Center for
Infrastructure Modeling and
Management – Use Cases”, OGC TC –
Smart Cities – St. Johns, Newfoundland, 29 June, 2017.
Bayer, T. , D.P. Ames, A. Van De Graaff, D. Arctur, A.C.
Rowney, R. Brashear, M. Luypaert,
B.R. Hodges, “Building an Open
Source Modeling Community for EPANET,” International
Congress on
Environmental Modelling and Software (iEMSs 2018), Fort Collins,
Colorado,
USA, Jun. 24-28, 2018.
Hodges, B.R., “Conservative finite-volume forms of the
Saint-Venant equations for hydrology
and urban drainage,”
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussion, submitted Jun. 2018.
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2018-242
Hodges, B.R., and A.C. Rowney, “Foundations for multi-thread
parallel computation in
stormwater network models,” 51st
International Conference on Water Management Modeling
(ICWWM),
Toronto, Canada, Feb. 28 – Mar. 1, 2018. https://www.icwmm.org/2018-C027-10
Madadi-Kandjani, E., L. Sela, K. Faust, F. Leite, and B.R.
Hodges, “Extending the capabilities of EPANET user interface with the
optimal design plugin tool,” 1st International WDSA / CCWI
2018
Joint Conference, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Jul. 23-25, 2018.
Madadi-Kandjani, E., L. Sela, K. Faust, F. Leite, and B.R.
Hodges, “Generating residential water demand profiles through EPANET
plugin development,” International Congress on
Environmental
Modelling and Software (iEMSs 2018), Fort Collins, Colorado, USA, Jun.
24-28,
2018.
Rowney, A.C., and B.R. Hodges, “SWMM and EPANET: Fostering a
community development
strategy,” International Conference on
Water Management Modeling, Toronto, Canada, March
1-2, 2017 https://www.icwmm.org/2017-C026-17
Rowney, A.C., L. Sela, K.M. Faust, and B.R. Hodges, “Research
at the National Center for
Infrastructure Modeling and
Management,” Defense Innovation Summit, Tampa, Florida, USA,
Oct. 3-5, 2017.
Tiernan E., and B. Hodges, “A python-based autocalibration
routine supporting the stormwater
management model,” World
Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2018, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, USA, Jun. 3-7, 2018.
Tiernan E., and B.R. Hodges, “Calibrating the stormwater
management model: an automated,
genetic approach,” 51st
International Conference on Water Management Modeling (ICWWM),
Toronto, Canada, Feb. 28 – Mar. 1, 2018. https://www.icwmm.org/2018-C027-24
Masters Thesis
Tiernan, E., Developing SWMMCALPY: an automated genetic approach to calibrating the storm water management model, M.S. Thesis, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2018.
Journal Articles: 21 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
| Other center views: | All 74 publications | 24 publications in selected types | All 21 journal articles |
|---|
| Type | Citation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Abokifa AA, Maheshwari A, Gudi RD, Biswas P. Influence of dead-end sections of drinking water distribution networks on optimization of booster chlorination systems. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 2019;145(12):04019053. |
R835950 (2019) R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Abokifa A A, Xing L, Sela L. Investigating the impacts of water conservation on water quality in distribution networks using an advection-dispersion transport model. Water 2020;12(4):1033 |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Abokifa A, Sela L. Integrating spatial clustering with predictive modeling of pipe failures in water distribution systems. URBAN WATER JOURNAL 2023;20(4):465-476 |
R835950 (2021) |
Exit |
|
|
Berglund EZ, Pesantez JE, Rasekh A, Shafiee, ME, Sela L, Haxton T. Review of modeling methodologies for managing water distribution security. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 2020;146(8):03120001 |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Hodges B. Conservative finite-volume forms of the Saint-Venant equations for hydrology and urban drainage. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 2019;23(3):1281-1304. |
R835950 (2021) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Hodges B, Sharior S, Tiernan E, Jenkins E, Rano-Briceno G, Davila-Hernandez C, Madadi-Kandjani E, Yu C. Introducing SWMM5+. JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING 2024;150(10) |
R835950 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Hodges BR, An artificial compressibility method for 1D simulation of open-channel and pressurized-pipe flow. Wate2020;12:6:1727. |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Morales-Hernandez M, Sharif MB, Gangrade S, Dullo TT, Kao S, Kalyanapu A, Ghafoor SK, Evans KJ, Madadi-Kanjani E, Hodges BR. High performance computing in water resources hydrodynamics. Journal of Hydroinformatic 2020;22(5):1217–1235 |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Riaño-Briceño G, Sela L, Hodges B. Distributed and vectorized method of characteristics for fast transient simulations in water distribution systems. Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 2021;37(2):163-184 |
R835950 (2022) |
Exit |
|
|
Salomons E, Sela L, Housh M. Hedging for privacy in smart water meters. Water Resources Research 2020;56(9):e2020WR027917 |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Tiernan ED, Hodges BR. A topological approach to partitioning flow networks for parallel simulation. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering 2022;36(4):04022010. |
R835950 (2021) |
Exit |
|
|
Wang S, Taha A, Sela L, Giacomoni M, Gatsis N. A new derivative-free linear approximation for solving the network water flow problem with convergence guarantees. WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH 2020;56(3). |
R835950 (2021) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Xing L, Sela L. Unsteady pressure patterns discovery from high-frequency sensing in water distribution systems. Water Research 2019;158:291-300. |
R835950 (2019) R835950 (2020) |
Exit |
|
|
Yu C, Hodges BR, Liu F. A new form of the Saint-Venant equations for variable topography. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 24:4001-4024, August 2020. |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Zhuang J, Sela L. Impact of emerging water savings scenarios on performance of urban water networks. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 2019;146(1):04019063. |
R835950 (2019) R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit Exit |
|
|
Abokifa AA, Sela L. Identification of spatial patterns in water distribution pipe failure data using spatial autocorrelation analysis. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 2019;145(12):04019057. |
R835950 (2019) R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Abokifa AA, Katz L, Sela L. Spatiotemporal trends of recovery from lead contamination in Flint, MI as revealed by crowdsourced water sampling. Water Research 2019:115442. |
R835950 (2019) R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit Exit |
|
|
Abokifa A, Biswas P, Hodges BR, Sela L. WUDESIM:a toolkit for simulating water quality in the dead-end branches of drinking water distribution networks. Urban Water Journal 2020;17(1):54-64. |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Hodges BR, Liu F. Timescale interpolation and no-neighbour discretization for a 1D finite-volume Saint-Venant solver. Journal of Hydraulic Research 2019:1-7. |
R835950 (2019) R835950 (2020) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Riaño-Briceño G, Hodges BR, Sela L. PTSNet:A Parallel Transient Simulator for Water Transport Networks based on vectorization and distributed computing. Environmental Modelling & Software 2022;158:105554. |
R835950 (2022) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Wang S, Taha AF, Sela L, Gatsis N, Giacomoni MH. State Estimation in Water Distribution Networks through a New Successive Linear Approximation. In2019 IEEE 58th Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2019 Dec 11 (pp. 5474-5479). IEEE. |
R835950 (2020) |
Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
EPANET, Plugin Tools, Genetic Algorithms, WNTR, Gentrification, EPANET, Operations, Software as a Service, On-Line SWMM, On-Line EPANET, water distribution threat management; review; emergency management; security; modeling and simulation, numerical solver, open-channel flow, model calibration, Community outreach, model development, Web portal, model repositoryRelevant Websites:
SWMM On-Line
EPANET2 On-Line (EPANET-OL)
Experimental Toolkit
QUAL2E
OnLine Dashboard
USGS
MOC OnLine Dashboard
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
- Final Report
- 2022 Progress Report
- 2021 Progress Report
- 2020 Progress Report
- 2019 Progress Report
- 2017 Progress Report
- Original Abstract
21 journal articles for this center