Since 1992, Severn Trent Water (STW), a major United Kingdom water company
providing 8 million customers in the center of England with a water supply and
sewerage disposal, has built only quasi-dynamic all-mains network models that
contain every pipe. The increasingly sophisticated techniques and procedures
involved have become well established, but the time taken to build models of ever
greater size and complexity has increased. When STW needed a model of Birmingham,
a city of some 1.1 million customers, a new approach was required. As a result,
STW awarded a series of contracts to Stoner Associates who were able to offer an
innovative methodology for model building. The construction of the Birmingham
All-Mains model commenced in 1995. Stoner Associates performed all data capture
work in the United States and employed a local sub-consultant, Parkman Ltd., to
carry out all the data gathering, field testing and calibration work. The data
capture and model construction work carried out in the US consisted of three main
tasks: digitizing the network; elevation assignment; and customer assignment.
Simultaneous to the model construction, 148 district metered areas were field
tested in the city. This required a phased approach due to ongoing rehabilitation
work with the STW distribution system. The final combined model contains in
excess of 76,000 nodes and models over 4,300 km of mains. It is one of the
largest dynamic all-mains models ever constructed. This paper discusses the
modeling approach used by Stoner Associates and the relationships between the
three parties. Includes 4 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| Number of Pages : | 18 |
| Published : | 01/01/1999 |
