lbutler

The goal is to replace clunky, expensive enterprise desktop tools (which often charge $10k+ for a wrapped version of the open-source US EPA engine). We want our version to be frictionless: login optional, runs entirely in the browser, and saves files locally to your device.

We are using the Functional Source License (FSL) to keep it sustainable while remaining open.

There is also a water quality component where you can calculate the age of water in the system or chemical, such as chlorine, or other by-products you may or may not want in the system.

The US EPA site goes into technical details on what the engine can do [0], but the vast majority of modeling is done as part of a water master plan for a water utility.

A water utility will build a hydraulic model of their network and calculate and model the growth of their city over a 30-year period. The model will highlight areas of concern, generally low pressure, and the water utility can propose new infrastructure like larger pipes, tanks, or pumps, and will schedule future capital works to keep service levels acceptable.

They generally repeat this process every 3–5 years, rebuilding the model and rewriting their master plans. Here is an example of a master plan by the City of Kyle [1].

Generally, a water utility is proposing tens of millions of capital works, if not more. So traditionally, the high price tag has just been accepted. But obviously, this doesn't scale down to smaller utilities, and normally consultants will do the work on their behalf, including holding the right software license.

The commercial tools have made it easier for engineers at consultancies and utilities to build hydraulic models by integrating GIS and providing support for scenarios to compare different states of the model or future developments of a city.

Though as Tom points out, this comes at a huge price.

The US EPA does offer a simple GUI which can be used for smaller systems but without a connection to GIS, its usage has been limited.

These commercial versions have become enterprise monsters, they are very complex and expensive.

We wanted to create the right balance between what the US EPA already gives away for free and what the big vendors offer. We believe that releasing the software as FSL which transitions to MIT gives us the right head start and for the advanced features we're charging about 10% of what Autodesk and Bentley do - and for those that think that's too much, they of course can download and host their own private version too.

For those that are still curious, here are some extra links and context.

The majority of commercial modeling software uses the U.S. EPA's engine and adds a nicer interface. They all fork the engine to add enhancements but don't contribute back.

This is our attempt to create an open-source alternative for water engineers and contribute back to the core engine at the same time.

You can check out the source code on GitHub[1].

A hydraulic model may be between 1-10MB and the simulation results can end up being 100+MB of time series data.

Other vendors with proprietary engines have to scale up servers to run their simulation engineers and will store and serve up results from a database.

Having everything done locally means we only have to store a static file and offload the simulation to the client.

Because we've architected it this way our hosting costs are low and users generally have faster access to results (assuming they're running a moderately decent machine)

Making the videos run much faster than normal, at least 1.5x and up to 3x in parts means you can provide a lot more density of information.

It does require the first pass to be visually interesting, and if you don't do something to stand out in the first three seconds you risk being scrolled past.

I also use subtitles to fill in the gaps and assume it will auto replay and if they make it through one replay, that further viewings will be easier to understand what is going on.

I have a relatively small following on LinkedIn ~2.5k but can get between 200-400 likes.

I then use these short clips on my GitHub pages for my work as well.

Some examples below:

A water utility in Spain spun off a start up called Qatium [2] and they used my library as the engine of their simulations and asked me to join.

A water utility in Spain spun off a start up to create a similar web based water modelling application and they used my open source library.

They approached me and I joined them and have been able to maintain the open source library as part of my role.