eWater is pleased to announce the latest Production Release of Source version 5.4.
| Table of Contents | ||
|---|---|---|
|
10. Key enhancements in version 5.4 10 include improvements to the Order Crawler, introduced in Source 5.0 for analysing orders, improvements to the Tabular Editor to support river operations and additional recorders to better understand water ordering with functions. Improvements to the Urban Developer plugin include better end-use customisation and new graphs to explore appliance water use.
Improvements to Source
A new recorder for analysing orders
We have built on the Order Crawler first released in Source 5.0. The new recorder can better analyse the progression of rules-based orders through complex planning models, in particular those with multiple flow paths and travel times. It shows all the nodes and links in a network and what their orders and requirements are on a particular date. This was designed as a debugging/analysis tool for the rules-based ordering system. Available under: Miscellaneous \ Ordering \ Order Crawler. The Order Crawler is a fully interactive zoomable schematic that can show:
- Min Constraints (All, Min Travel time, Max Travel Time, Min & Max)
- Max Constraints (All, Min Travel time, Max Travel Time, Min & Max)
- Orders \ Requirements (All, Min Travel time, Max Travel Time, Min & Max)
- Downstream Flow
- Travel Time (Min and Max)
Note that for large networks, it does record a lot of data and is primarily for problem-solving and is not intended to always be turned on.
Order recorders
Additional recorders were requested to better understand the water that has been ordered when using functions. We have added recorders at each node with the following names under rules-based-ordering:
Orders > Arriving Current Timestep (expected)
Orders > Minimum Travel Time
Orders > Maximum Travel Time
Note Arriving Current Timestep (expected) is equivalent to the original Orders recorder.
River Operations Tabular Editor Improvements
The operations tabular editor now shows what cells can be edited, and can include comments on cells. Comments can be added to cells whether values are overridden or not:
You can also view all overrides and cells with comments using View Overrides:
You can also Clear Historical Overrides through this view.
Weirs and Constituents
The previous logic for running Constituent Instream Processing for Weirs was based on the logic for Storages.
- The Instream Processing model was given the entire body of water associated with the feature.
- The processing model would run once per time step for each constituent.
- The Instream Processing model did not handle the upstream link component of the weir.
This was different from how these models behave for Storage Routing Links. Which is:
- given access only to a single division, and
- run once for each division and constituent in a Link.
The previous logic wouldn't work when the model included hard limits e.g. in this model, the average concentration is not meant to exceed 9mg/L. When the Model runs for the entire Weir, we can see this is true on average:
But when we look per division, we can see that some divisions drop to 0 while others can reach double the cap 18.
Changing the logic for weirs to be consistent with storage routing resolves this issue since the cap is applied in each division rather than across the entire link.
Constituent Instream Processing for Weirs is restricted to Marker routing, i.e. it is not implemented for Lumped routing. (If Lumped routing is being used storages would make a more sensible model for the infrastructure than weirs.)
Sub Source plugin improvements
Previously mappings between main and the sub-models called from the main model were tied to a single run configuration. If you make a new run configuration then the mapping has to be redone. Sub Source mappings have now been moved into a manager so that the same mapping can be used by multiple run configurations. Available under Tools » Sub-model Manning Manager.
We have also improved how Sub Source works with single projects. For single projects, the plugin will now:
- get meta data from the loaded project rather than starting the service when doing configuration, and
- Run the current project without needing to manually save before the run
Documentation is available here: SubSource Plugin
Urban Developer
eWater’s Urban Developer Tool gives water managers the ability to undertake a detailed analysis of household demand and water supply options, taking into account the range of dwelling types, water end uses, the water efficiency of different appliances and fittings, and lot size water harvesting/re-use options. As a plugin to Source, Urban Developer allows for a sophisticated small scale assessment of urban water demands to be undertaken within a larger scale Source planning model.
Custom end-uses
Custom end-uses can now be defined under Edit \ Urban Developer Options. Right click Custom End Uses to add your own.
Appliance configuration
Appliance configurations now have graphs to provide more insight into water use, an example for showers is shown below
Summary of minor changes
...
Operations Tabular Editor, the ability to Hot Start GR4J and Sacramento rainfall-runoff models, significant enhancements to the Calibration Tool, updates to the Environmental Flow Node and Manager and additions to Scenario Input Sets to make it easier to work with large models with significant scenario modelling.
| Table of Contents | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Improvements to Source
Calibration Improvements
The calibration tool has been significantly extended, you can now:
- calibrate Schematic Scenarios,
- calibrate any parameters in the model that are available through Scenario Input Sets, and
- specify relationships between meta-parameters.
This is a significant step forward for the calibration tool, it's currently called Flow Calibration Tool, however, this should be updated soon.
The Calibration tool and Bivariate stats now support multiple parameters for Objective Functions. The Square-root Daily, Exceedance, and Bias function now has three parameters, Alpha (α), Lamda (λ) and Mu (μ). Details of the implementation are here: Bivariate Statistics SRG
These can now be set in both the Calibration tool and when looking at the Bivariate stats in the Results Manager:
Calibration using Parallel runs within Source
When using the Shuffled Complex Evolution optimisation, you can now run multiple instances of Source to improve the speed of the calibration:
Environmental Flow Node and Environmental Flow Manager
There has been a number of improvements in Environmental Flows. We have extended the Environmental Flows node's Spell action. Functions are now available for:
- Number of spells in a season,
- Number of spells for success in a season, and
- Spell duration.
The values of these functions can't change every day during a simulation. The values of the functions are taken from before the start of the season. To allow for the forcing of spells during a season, the values need to be taken allowing for travel time before the start of the season.
There is also a new option to allow the fall phase of spells to occur after the end of the season.
Scenario Input Sets and the Export summary now include more information about Environmental Flow Actions. The path for the existing Scenario Inputs Sets will need to change from Rules → Actions. API details are in RM-16591. Terminology in the User Interface for one of the Initial Values at the start of run has been corrected during the process of developing the full API. Time since last successful season has been changed to Time since last successful spell in a successful season.
The Environmental Flow Node and the Environmental Flow Manager now both support the addition of Notes.
Scenario Input Sets in Node / Link feature editors
When working with large models with significant scenario modelling with Scenario Input Sets, it can be hard to recognise that Input Sets may change the run-time configuration. When there are multiple Scenario Input Sets, we have included Scenario Input Sets in each feature editor to show the number of changes to the current node/link across the Scenario Input Sets:
Splitters can now be considered regulated in Rules-based Ordering
The Option Treat Splitter as a Regulated Supply Node in Rules Based Ordering is now available in the controlled splitter node:
This can be used when connecting an unregulated section of a network to a regulated section. Previously, the confluence node would only allow you to consider branches to be regulated if there was a Storage node above it, this has been changed to allow splitters to operate as a regulated structure and receive orders.
Confluences now also handle constraints for Unregulated sections of networks. For orders to be passed up to the splitter, constraints needed to be propagated down confluences. This improvement makes Confluences sum together the forecasts from each of its two branches when they are both unregulated.
River Operations Improvements
The Operations Tabular Editor has new options including Uncheck All for working with the active recorders:
From within View Overrides you can now Clear Historical Overrides:
Operations models now have a summary of Forecast models across the model
Hot start rainfall-runoff models
When running Rainfall-runoff models GR4J or Sacramento, you can take a Snapshot of their internal state variables, they can then be saved to a file and applied at the start of a model run. This removes the need to do a warmup period for running these rainfall-runoff models. The snapshot files now include catchment name and functional unit names as well as an additional metadata file, e.g:
- rsnap
- rsnap.metadata
Safe Release Capacity
The Save Release Capacity setting on Storage Outlet Paths was previously a static value. This has been changed to allow a function to be set. We changed the internal model processing so that the release algorithm checks the input parameter for every calculation:
Ability to model individual components of distribution loss
You can now model 9 different individual components of Distribution Loss at a Supply Point. This is on a new, optional, separate tab:
Summary of minor changes
- Order Crawler now includes constraint factors. They are specified per owner, so when there are multiple owners in the system, we have included the average across owners. We also resolved a bug when there were multiple owners, the total wasn't always being shown and it was reporting the results for the first owner it found.
- Improvements to the Hydroclimate data transformation tool plugin (version 2.2), details and the new manual are available here: Hydroclimate Data Transformation Tool
- Scenario Input Sets now supports values that can go over one line. To use {MultiLineValue} include it after the = sign, and end it with {/MultiLineValue}. Example: MultiLineValue.txt
- Issues with date formats changing on different computers have been resolved by moving to exports based on yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. We will continue to import data from a variety of formats, however, tools such as Scenario Input Sets, and the Export Summary will now be using this format regardless of the user's local settings.
- An oversight in the algorithm to determine ownership at the splitter node has been resolved. Ownership at splitters could become negative in rare cases when sharing unallocated flows, it was previously assumed the allocated flow was always less than the actual flow.
- We no longer support node or link names with trailing white space. For example, nodes and links with names such as "Storage " won't be allowed to open in this version of Source. You will need to fix these names in a previous version of Source. These trailing white spaces were causing errors to occur in the results manager.
- Improvements to the Data Sources Overview
- Auto export results now use the dimension Display Units
- The Simulation log file has more content for Data Sources
- New Scenario creator Single Catchment Scenario Builder
- Other minor bug fixes.
Community Plugin Changes
We have moved to .net 4.8.0 which requires Visual Studio 2019. We are planning on moving to .NET 5. The transition to .NET 5.0 won't be a quick process as some components we currently use will no longer be supported, however it does provide a potential pathway to running natively on Linux. Source can currently be run on Linux under Wine, but only natively on Windows.
Results and Configuration Changes
Some results have changed between Source 5.0 4 and Source 5.410. Changes include how marker constituent processing works in Weirs and how the confluences process unregulates sections of a network. Details are available here: 5.XX 10 Results and Configuration Changes from 5.04