Urban Developer is here!
How many showers would the members of a given household or street have in any one week; how long would those showers last; and how much water would they typically consume? How many times would those householders flush the toilet in an hour or a day, and how much water would their washing machines and other water-using appliances consume?
How does the equation change as people in the house or street adopt water-efficient appliances, or if architects, builders and developers installed more rainwater or greywater tanks and moved us away from the mains?
These are the sorts of questions urban planners, managers and designers in the urban water sector grapple with every day.
Now eWater CRC has achieved a major breakthrough by developing a software product for Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) that allows users to simulate the way human behaviour impacts household water use.
As the Productivity Commission urges reform on a highly stressed urban water sector, eWater has launched Urban Developer, a new tool to support Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM), after a beta testing period. The product was launched at Singapore Water Week this week.
Urban Developer lets users examine, design and assess how a system based on water–sensitive urban design principles will operate. The modelling framework is equally applicable to brown and greenfield sites, and can also be used to explore issues such as urban renewal by enabling exploration of innovative service delivery strategies.
With a focus on water quantity and the total water cycle, Urban Developer complements eWater’s popular product music, which is designed for stormwater quality management.
Key features:
- Conceptual and preliminary design tool that replaces current manual processes;
- Clearly represent all three urban water cycle services and the interaction inherent between them – potable, waste and stormwater;
- Deal with probabilistic demand and end-use simulation;
- Analyse models using either continuous rainfall and climate data over long periods or using design storm events;
- Integrate systems at a range of spatial scales;
- Explore the effects of rainwater harvesting; and
- Powerful capacity for upscaling and downscaling.
