Posted: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:09 AM - 10,336 Readers

By: MWH Soft

The City of Austin, TX, has selected MWH Soft's InfoWorks SD and InfoWorks RS for advanced stormwater and river modeling and management. Situated on the Colorado River, the city has three man-made lakes within its limits: Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Walter E. Long, all on the river. The foot of Lake Travis, including Mansfield Dam, is also located within the city limits. This complex river system is augmented by 960 miles (1540 km) of storm drainage piping.

On average, Austin receives 33.6 inches (853 mm) of rain per year, with most of the precipitation falling in the spring. The eastern part of the city is flat, while the western part and western suburbs lie on rolling hills. Because these hills are primarily limestone rock with a thin covering of topsoil, the runoff from thunderstorms often creates flash floods in portions of the city.

InfoWorks SD, part of MWH Soft's workgroup management modeling product line, is the industry's first fully dynamic hydraulic modeling solution. It was designed specifically to fulfill the demanding requirements of stormwater modeling for utilities whose storm water system is separate from its sanitary system. InfoWorks SD enables users to model storm water flows through a complex environment with a diversity of underground and overland structures and paths, applying the same high quality of function and analysis to open channels as to closed conduits. Because simulations can be event-based or continuous in real time, InfoWorks SD is ideal for infrastructure design and evaluation projects as well as real time operational use. An enhanced version of InfoWorks SD, complete with fully integrated 2D capability, is available as an option.

InfoWorks RS is an integrated software for simulating flows in rivers, in channels and on floodplains. It provides a single tool to import, clean up and store survey and time series data; build detailed and accurate models; analyze model results; and present outputs in engineering report quality formats. Its robust simulation capabilities include full solution modeling of open channels, culverts, floodplains, embankments and hydraulic structures, plus rainfall-runoff simulation using both event based and conceptual hydrological methods. Water quality parameters may be simulated by looking at pollution inputs, dispersion, decay and the reactions between differing pollutants. Erosion, transport and deposition of channel bed material can also be simulated.

Full interactive and animated views of data and results are available using geographical plan views, 3D views, sectional views, long profiles, spreadsheet and time varying graphical data. Full flood-mapping capability is based on a sophisticated flood-interpolation model overlaid onto an imported ground model. Underlying model data can be accessed from any graphical or geographical view.

'InfoWorks RS offers hydrologists, planners and engineers the most powerful and efficient river and channel systems modeling platform with which to investigate the full range of flood risk management and catchment planning issues,' said J. Erick Heath, P.E., MWH Soft Vice President and Director of Americas Operations. 'Its adoption by the City of Austin further confirms that that our products are performing at a high level to help engineers create and manage sustainable wet infrastructure, even in the most challenging conditions.'

*  Story Contributed by: MWH Soft