Introduction
The Environmental Demand Model (EDM) in Source operates on a daily basis generating demands and extracting water to meet these demands using the environmental demand and supply point node. The model can be applied in both regulated and unregulated systems.
The EDM provides a means of capturing prescriptive descriptions of water patterns that the environment requires. These definitions of watering patterns are captured as ‘flow rules’ within the EDM and many combinations of flow rules can be prescribed for a single supply point. The four types of flow rules presented in the EDM have been designed to capture the most commonly defined environmental flow requirements specified in environmental flow studies and water regulations. These environmental demand rules allow you to construct a collective environmental water requirement by using combinations of environmental demand rules. These are:
The four types of flow rules presented in the EDM have been designed to capture the most commonly defined environmental flow requirements specified in environmental flow studies and water regulations. These four types of environmental demand rules allow users to construct a collective environmental water requirement by using combinations of environmental demand rules. The four rule types are:
- Minimum - specifies a minimum flow, usually applied to maintain minimum habitat requirements;
- High Flow/Flood - specifies a flood fresh, usually associated with a recruitment event such as to trigger fish movement, water floodplain vegetation;
- Translucency - specifies the flow requirements in terms of some other time series, usually the release from a dam based on the inflow of the dam; and
- Pattern - specifies a pattern of flow, used to define multi-peak events.
These rules are configured in the environmental demand node's feature editor.