4.5 - Production Release (June 2018)

eWater is pleased to announce the latest production release of Source version 4.5 which is packed with new and updated features developed over the past 6 months since v4.3.  
 
Source 4.5 is faster in running, loading, saving and editing large catchment models. Environmental Flows, Pipe Junctions, Annual Accounting Resource Assessment systems and Management of Distribution losses between the offtake and water user/farm gate have all been improved in Source 4.5. A new Model Profiling Tool allows you to analyse model run times to optimise performance, and there are additional options so you can customise the look of the network display. Highlights since Source Production Release 4.3 include:

Environmental Flows

The new environmental flow functionality enables multiple environmental rules, sites, and account holders to be managed and prioritised centrally through the environmental flow manager. Environmental flow patterns may be dependent on a range of current and prior system conditions, and environmental flow account balances. The environmental flow node allows for configuration of spell based and translucency action types with various parameters to do with timing, size and shape of the desired flow patterns.

This release of Source 4.5 delivers improved management of return intervals in the manager, event termination behaviour and water requirement calculations.

• The flow manager now allows for the opportunistic use of available environmental water following successful seasons. The environmental flow node can still be used independently of the environmental flow manager to order water if the desired frequency interval has elapsed since the last successful season. 
• The travel time associated with the reference flow in a translucency action is now assumed to be the minimum travel time, ie the time Source calculates it will take for the flow to reach the node from the closest storage.
• Spells are now considered to have failed (and therefore have the event terminated to avoid wasting more water) as soon as any success criterion (volume, flow rate or timestep) has failed, rather than when minimum spell duration has elapsed. 
• The volume of water required for a planned event is now calculated more accurately, with the water required for the specified rise and fall behaviour taken into account.   

See Environmental Flow Node and Environmental Flow Manager scientific reference guide entries for further information on the underlying methods of calculation and management.

Runtime Performance for catchment projects

Runtime across all of the catchment models has improved, projects such as the Mackay Whitsunday, with 11 Functional units, over 200 catchments and 20 constituents now runs in 60% of the time it previously ran in Source version 4.3.   

Project Load and Save times

Load times have been reduced across most projects, both catchments based and schematic based projects.   Almost all project save times have also been reduced.

 Entitlement for Annual Accounting Accounts can now be defined with a function

The Entitlement of an account can now be modified during a run. Increasing or decreasing the entitlement won't change the account balance or the available water.  It will change the water that will get allocated next time an allocation occurs.

 Pipe Junctions

When using the Pipe Junction node with priority ordering, orders made by Pipe Junctions are now given a higher priority than any other order in the system. 

This is to ensure that orders in the ordering phase can be delivered in the flow phase even when there are shortfalls in the system.

 Supply Point Distribution System Loss

You can now specify a mix of proportional and constant volume for distribution system loss (loss between the offtake and water user/farm gate). There is also an option to continue to order the volume loss when there are no orders using "Order to fill channel":

Chart Aggregator now includes water years

You can now do annual aggregations in a chart to a customised water year start, rather than just the calendar year:

Network Display improvements 

There is a new scenario option for what nodes / Links you would like to be displayed on the Schematic or Geographic editors. It's available from either the Schematic editor, the Geographic editor, or under Scenario Options (Node/Link Display Settings).  It can be used to hide all of the confluence nodes, which can be helpful in a geographic model:

Model Profiling tool

A model profiling tool is now available as a recorder: Miscellaneous \ Performance \ Scenario Model Timings.  It produces a report that shows execution time per component (node/link/catchment) and per phase (flow, constituent, ordering. etc.).

To improve model run time you can use this tool to find areas in your model that take the most time and check: /wiki/spaces/SD45/pages/53970170 for ideas about how to improve the model runtime. Example outputs are provided below.

Model Phase Summary:                                                Component \ phase heat map: 

Minor Enhancements:

• Single Installer - We now have a single installer for both 64bit and 32bit machines. We also have a single .zip file for binaries which will work for both 64bit and 32bit machines.

• Improved notes in resource assessment - You can now add in comments in more areas of Annual Accounting Resource Assessment.

Results and Configuration Changes

Some results have changed between Source 4.3 and Source 4.5. Result changes are mostly around Environmental Flows and changes to Weirs. The eWater development team maintains a detailed system to track when results vary between different version of Source. The details at the following link will help you work out why the results have changed, and any alterations you may need to make to your model configuration. Details of result changes: 4.5 Result Changes from 4.3