When I started in the water profession many years ago, there was a clear distinction between the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the Water Pollution Control Federation (WPCF), now known as the Water Environment Federation (WEF). AWWA dealt with drinking water while WPCF handled wastewater.
It’s difficult to pick up an engineering magazine or journal without seeing an article about how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to solve all of our problems. While these tools are indeed powerful and useful, are they really the panacea that they are sold as?
Isolation valves are essential components of water distribution systems. Without them, repairing a pipe break or performing other maintenance would require shutting down the entire water distribution system or resorting to some heroic work on pressurized pipes.
Everyone wants to reduce water loss. No one likes to see water running over the ground. But people who understand the water industry know that reducing water loss to zero just isn’t economical. Spending $10,000 to save $50 worth of water may not be good management. It depends on the value of water which is not necessarily the price customers pay for water.
Check Out the OpenFlows WaterGEMS Updated Control Editor with special Q&A with Tom Walski
Pretty much everyone who has worked in water distribution has been involved with hydrant flow testing at one time or another. It’s not very difficult. Place a pressure gauge on a residual hydrant and flow a nearby hydrant while recording the hydrant flow and the pressure at the residual hydrant with no flow and with flow. The procedure is documented in many places (AWWA, 2016).
While writing research papers on how real-time control has become a major industry in academia, Tom has not seen a great deal of RTC applied in real systems.
Pump stations are fed by the power grid, so when the power goes out, it also goes out for water pumping stations. And water utilities don’t like their systems losing pressure.
The Blackwell Group is a multidisciplinary engineering firm located in Virginia that performs work in the residential, commercial, and government sectors. Stormwater design and site grading are just a few of the many services that Blackwell Group offers. In a typical stormwater project, the Blackwell Group designs a grading plan for a proposed redevelopment or new development. While creating the grading plan, they evaluate stormwater impacts of both pre- and post-development by performing hydrologic studies for the 2-, 10-, and 100-year storm events.