A new sophisticated software has been developed by the Intelligent Water Decisions Group to help manage our most precious resource: water.
Researchers from the Intelligent Water Decisions Group have developed the Pumping Operation for Alternative Water Sources (POAWS) software, which is designed to assist organisations in the complex management of water. The software was developed over a two year period by Dr Angela Marchi, Professor Angus Simpson, Professor Martin Lambert and Lisa Blinco.
The new software has been implemented by Orange City Council, NSW. The Orange City area came close to running out of water, due to droughts in 2000 and 2010. As a response, the Council developed a range of alternative water sources to help supplement the existing supply.
The use of multiple water sources requires careful management, which is aided by the POAWS software.
“We have developed the POAWS toolkit taking into account the Orange system’s requirements and its ease-of-use,” Prof Simpsons says. “The user can optimise the system performance in dry, average and wet years.”
On the 23rd of June 2016, researchers from the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities hosted Samantha McGufficke from Orange City Council (NSW) and Martin Haege from Geolyse to introduce the POAWS software.
“The presentation of the optimisation model was extremely useful and it is our opinion that it will be a useful planning tool for Orange City Council to help inform decisions about the mix of water sources” Martin Haege wrote in an email to the Adelaide team after their visit.
Communication between the Adelaide researchers and Orange City Council will continue over the next few months as the software is further tested. Updates will be made to ensure it has all the required functionality and the settings are suited to the Orange system.
“We are really pleased to know that our Industry Partners Martin Haege and Samantha McGufficke are satisfied.” Prof Lambert says. “We hope that the POAWS software can be useful to other Councils in the future.”
The connection between the Adelaide researchers and Orange City Council was forged through the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities. For further information about the POAWS system, read the Intelligent Water Decisions Group blog posts: The importance of multi-disciplinary research for alternative water sources and Optimise pump controls automatically to save time and money.
From left to right: Martin Haege, Samantha McGufficke, Lisa Blinco, Dr Angela Marchi, Professor Angus Simpson and Professor Martin Lambert.
