Best practice guide for hydraulic model export

Hydraulic network models are efficient decision support tools used for the effective management of water distributions networks (WDNs). Hydraulic network models provide multiple benefits to the WDNs such as: – allowing for the testing of scenarios and will predict the be behaviour within the WDN, – improve the reliability and efficiency of an existing network design, – optimize a new network design, – assist in water quality analysis (e.g. water temperature, lead dispersion, discoloration, etc.), and – support decision making process of operations and maintenance.
EPANET (current version 2.2) is a commonly used open source tool used for the development of hydraulic network models and their applications. EPANET files can be used by any programming language, manipulated easily, and commonly used in the research community. Additionally, new water analytic tools such as Gondwana, Vlindernet, Stormwater Management Model, pyswmm, WNTR, epanet-dev, etc. are based on the EPANET tool.
In this document, the best practices of hydraulic network models development and export are discussed. The success of the hydraulic models predictions is dependent on the accuracy of the input parameters and on calibration of the model. KWR researchers often work with hydraulic network models of the utilities to test their tools. Experience has taught us that it often costs a lot of time, going back and forth between researchers and modellers of the utilities, before an EPANET model is up to the standard where it can be used in research. This document describes the required standards and how to achieve those.