In those days, a junior engineer could spend an entire day calculating flows and pressures in a pipe network. At the end of the day, he could show it to his supervisor who would say, “I thought we were going to put a 12-inch pipe over there?” The engineer would look at his boss, look at his day’s work, look at his boss, look at his work again, quietly deposit his work into the trash, and make the required adjustment.

The story of the history of water distribution system analysis (WDSA) is pretty fascinating, at least to me. There have been a large number of contributors to where we are today in water distribution modeling.

We are a water innovation explosion. When planning your water distribution strategy, it should be easy. We recommend starting with digital twin modeling.

It isn’t necessary to explain that customers expect safe, reliable, and affordable water, that distribution systems are a critical link in providing service, that buried and aging infrastructure is a challenge to manage, and that many utilities in the US struggle due to lack of enough funding. These issues are reviewed continually by the water industry to assess what should be done.

with advances in SCADA and digital twins, we are doing a much better job collecting data on pump performance. But what is the best metric for judging pump efficiency?

Just as there are classics in literature like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, there are classic works in water and wastewater.

There is no doubt about it, the world is going digital, and the water industry is going along with it. I’m on board with the trend as it is generally making our lives a little better.

I explained that a single hydrant flow test was pretty useless for evaluating system capacity or model calibration.