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What is Urban Developer?

Urban Developer (UD) is an integrated urban water cycle modelling (IUWM) tool designed to meet the needs of water professionals facing the challenges of integrated water cycle service planning and assessment arising from the ever-increasing pressures on Australia’s water resources.

Urban Developer is available in two forms, as a Standalone application, and as a plugin for eWater Source. The Urban Developer Plugin allows urban water cycle modelling to be integrated within Source's whole-of-river-system modelling framework.

Urban Developer Scope

The Urban Developer allows exploration of urban water systems in a level of detail and Plugin provides for the integration of detailed urban water demand modelling scenarios with whole-of-system Source scenarios with a degree of flexibility not offered by existing integrated models.

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.

The allotment scale represents household-level water supply, water use and water disposal services, and allows you to evaluate Operating within a Source user environment, urban demand is simulated as one or more scenarios containing representative household-level end use, with outputs which can also be transferred to a water user node in a Source schematic or catchments scenario. This allows the modeller to evaluate, for example: the cumulative effects of individual water end use actions . For example, with Urban Developer's Water Use model, you can examine the cumulative such as the effect of installing water-saving showerheads or dual-flush toilets in individual households.

A small grouping of 2 - 30 allotments, businesses and/ or commercial premises.The cluster scale is particularly useful for exploring decentralised supply, treatment, reuse, and disposal options, as it enables potential for some economies of scale in infrastructure delivery, and ameliorates some of the need for expensive centralised distribution and collection infrastructure. 

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.

Demand and End-use Simulation

Urban Developer represents demand by simulating individual end-uses at the household level. The end-use categories included in Urban Developer are:

• outdoor/variable;
• 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 not modelled explicitly, but can be lumped with the outdoor/variable end-use. 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.

Refer to the Water Use (page 117) node for details on how to select between the two different methods for a particular water use node.

Acknowledgements

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

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