MWH Soft Enhances Water Modeling Software With Fire Flow And Scenario Upgrades

Automated Community Fire Protection Infrastructure Manager and Intelligent Scenario Explorer Add Vanguard Capabilities to Company's Water Utility Suite

Broomfield, CO — In a radical technology breakthrough for water utilities worldwide, MWH Soft, a leading global provider of environmental and water resources applications software, has announced improvements to all products in its water modeling family with the debut of Automated Community Fire Protection Infrastructure Manager and Intelligent Scenario Explorer. Both technology upgrades are downloadable from the product center section of the MWH Soft website. The state-of-the-art enhancements reflect MWH Soft's commitment to technological advancement, further securing the standing of its Water Utility Suite as the indispensable engineering complement to infrastructure design and management software technologies.

Created in response to customer feedback, both upgrades introduce valuable user-driven enhancements and functionalities, along with architectural and database improvements that make sophisticated water systems analysis and design applications fast and easy to use. They break new ground in engineering productivity and equip water utilities with unprecedented power to improve system management, operation and protection, and then pass these benefits on to their customers through better designs and higher quality standards, achieved in a shorter turnaround time.

Water distribution system components, including pipelines, appurtenances, and storage facilities, are generally sized to provide adequate fire protection. Protection varies according to the size of the area and nature of the property. Utilities are normally required to maintain minimum fire flows and pressures for specified durations, from a single or multiple hydrants, and limit maximum pipe velocities based upon designated land use. As limiting demand conditions, fire flows are normally superimposed on the average system demand of the maximum day.

Using exact analytical mathematical solutions, the new centralized Automated Community Fire Protection Infrastructure Manager provides accurate and robust fire flow computations that meet the complete set of community fire protection criteria at record-breaking speed. They include:

• Residual pressure at the required fire flow demand
• Residual pressure based on the targeted fire flow for the specified duration (e.g., 2 hours)
• Amount of fire flow available to maintain the target minimum residual pressure at the hydrant (e.g., 20 psi)
• Amount of fire flow available (a.k.a, design flow) at each hydrant to maintain a minimum zone or system pressure (e.g., 20 psi)
• Amount of fire flow available at each hydrant to maintain a minimum residual pressure (e.g., 20 psi) when two or more hydrants are opened simultaneously (multiple simultaneous fire flows)
• Maximum available fire flow at each hydrant to maintain a maximum pipe velocity (e.g., 10 ft/sec for distribution mains and 25 ft/sec for service connection pipes)

The new Intelligent Scenario Explorer supplements MWH Soft's advanced Scenario and Facility Manager and Control Centers by providing a consistent, fully centralized and consolidated data modeling and management environment. In this setting, users can quickly view, analyze, report and compare "what-if" scenarios in the water distribution network while maintaining a paper trail of design and operational changes to the system. This leads to faster, more effective master planning and decision support. Scenarios can be created by mixing and matching any desired combination of modeling data sets describing specific aspects and wide range of conditions of the system: different demand and fire flow loadings, facility (pipe, pump, valve and tank) sets, and operational control and settings for various planning horizons. These capabilities offer users unprecedented opportunities for modeling and collaboration, improved data quality and operational efficiencies, and decreased redundancy of work steps.

Commenting on the new upgrades, Tony A. Akel, PE, President of Akel Engineering Group in Fresno, CA, and a leading national expert in water and sewer systems modeling, noted, "MWH Soft's speed in developing innovative, high-performance products is very impressive, and each one sets new standards of modeling excellence. Productivity enhancements like these make a significant difference in the quality and timing of the projects we undertake. MWH Soft always sees to it that its upgrades are consistently timed, can be quickly implemented, and require no new training. The company clearly understands and values their customers' needs, always endeavoring to give them more, easier-to-use capabilities than they expect. Together, they give us the tools for any challenge."

"These key technology upgrades reflect our ongoing determination to provide our customers with enhanced, high-value software that helps them strengthen and optimize their hydraulic infrastructures, meet regulatory requirements, and attain significant cost savings," said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D, President and COO of MWH Soft. "Using these powerful capabilities, water utilities worldwide have new power to leverage highly advanced network modeling tools to plan reliable, cost-effective improvements and manage their drinking water distribution systems via an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. The advanced technology of our latest product upgrades is yet another example of our company's steadfast commitment to breakthrough innovation."

SOURCE: MWH Soft