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Urban Developer provides the ability to simulate all three urban water cycle service networks (water supply, stormwater, wastewater), ranging in scale from a single allotment up to large clusters or small subdivisions.
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Beyond the cluster scale are the subdivision and suburb scales. Again, there is no clear delineation between these terms as there can be crossovers between them.
For example the term subdivision can be applied to the creation of two or more allotments but is typically used to describe developments in the 10s or 100s of houses.
Beyond the subdivision scale lies the broader suburb / catchment scale. This scale presents a number of key challenges for modellers as the number of houses and service system components becomes computationally prohibitive for individual process modelling. A key application of Urban Developer is as a platform to explore the representation of urban water systems at this scale and understand the impacts of decentralised management practices at the suburb and city scale.
Urban scenarios model water networks as a series of nodes and links. This lumped approach means that while some node models may have a spatial component, all activity at these nodes is assumed to occur at a single point. Modelling that requires spatial variation should use the functionality available in Source catchment scenarios.
Urban Scenarios
A Source model consists of two parts - a project and one or more scenarios. A project is a wrapper for a collection of one or more scenarios. It identifies the project name, description, and any scenarios associated with the project.
A scenario is the representation of a node-link network in Source and describes the major processes in a river system or catchment that are modelled. This includes catchment and sub-catchment definition, rainfall runoff and constituent generation models, data sets and parameters.
Three scenario types are available in the core Source framework.
- A schematic scenario is primarily concerned with modelling longer time-scales;
- An operations scenario is primarily concerned with shorter time-scales. It utilises facilities for forecasting and working with unaccounted differences, and typically makes heavy use of the Tabular Editor; and
- A catchments scenario which deals with the management of upland catchment processes.
An Urban demand scenario, currently available in the same location as the others when the Urban plugin is installed, is used to represent the integrated urban water cycle networks (water supply, stormwater, wastewater), ranging in scale from a single allotment up to large clusters or small subdivisions.
Urban Demand
Urban Developer represents demand is represented by simulating individual end-uses at the household level. The end-use categories included in Urban Developer are:
• outdoor;
• shower;
• washing machine;
• toilets and
• indoor hand taps.
These five end-uses typically comprise 93-98% of household water use (Thyer et al, 2008). End-uses such as baths and leaks are excluded. By separating demand into its individual users this provides the user with the flexibility to use different sources for each of the different types of end-use. The urban demand is represented by a Water Use node. Urban Developer offers two methods for simulating the water use at a water use node, either:
• Average daily model, or
• Behavioural model , with two different configurations:
a) Fixed appliances and occupancy specified for each water use node in the model
b) Randomly sampled values for appliances and occupancy across the water use
nodes in the model
c) Average appliance and occupancy, using the same probability distribution of the sampled model, but producing a single mean value.
The average daily and behavioral model are two different nodes in the node palette.
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the impact of urban water use restrictions on total system water supply.
Figure 1. presents an outline of the steps and options available in creating and modelling Urban end-use demands within Source. While a Source Urban Developer Scenario can be run at a local scale representing single scenario urban demands, it is most powerful when run at a larger scale where modelled urban demands are incorporated into a Source scenario
While this documentation describes the configuration of a single Water Use node, multiple nodes can be added in an Urban Developer scenario, particularly if running the scenario in ‘stand-alone’ mode as a single Urban Configuration.
Figure 1. Using the Urban developer plugin to model urban demands in Source
Contents
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Navigating the User Guide
The Urban Developer Plugin User Guide contains two parts:
- Building and running an Urban Scenario in Source: describes how to create, configuration and run an urban water systems model
- Linked River System Scenarios: describes how to integrate an Urban Scenario with Source schematic or catchment Scenarios.
The Urban Developer Plugin User Guide assumes that readers are familiar with the eWater Source modelling framework.
Acknowledgements
eWater gratefully acknowledges the leadership, financial and technical support of Melbourne Water in the preparation of the Urban Developer Plugin. eWater also acknowledges the work of Dr Mark Thayer in developing the behavioural end-use stochastic simulator (BESS) for household water simulation that is used in Urban Developer.
This material has been adapted from:
eWater Cooperative Research Centre (2011) Urban Developer User Guide: Urban Developer v1.0.0, eWater Cooperative Research Centre, Canberra, 29 June 2011. ISBN 978-1-921543-40-1