Water Modeling Software Survey

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During the past three decades the water modeling software industry has evolved into a highly dynamic, competitive, and complex market place for utilities and engineering companies looking for tools to design, analyze, and optimize water distribution, wastewater conveyance, and stormwater management infrastructure.

Commissioned by Bentley, a leading provider of water resources modeling software, this survey provides an insight about the vendors, products, and user requirements for each of the segments that comprise the water modeling software industry.

The survey was distributed during August 2007 across CE News' Civil Connection e-newsletter readership. 800 water modeling software users around the country voluntarily participated with their answers. Here are the results:

•  Most popular solutions by sub-category
•  Most important attributes for water modelers
•  About water modeling vendors
•  About water modeling platforms and work environments

MOST POPULAR SOLUTIONS BY SUB-CATEGORY

A wealth of vendors from commercial, academic, and government sectors compete with their software solutions in different industry sub-categories. Most vendors focus on a couple of these categories while few others provide solutions across all of them.

1. Water distribution systems modeling

Water utilities and municipalities, and the consultants working for them, use water distribution modeling software to design new distribution mains as urban population grows, minimize energy consumption by optimizing pumping strategies, assess system reliability under power outages or fire events, and evaluate flushing strategies during potential contamination scenarios among other applications.

Based on the survey results, Bentley solutions including WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, and CyberNET, are the most popular water distribution models in the U.S. with 58% of the market. WaterCAD is the No. 1 solution with 45% of market share, followed by EPANET, an application developed by USEPA, with 14, and MWHSoft's H2ONet and H2OMap with 12%.

2. Transient analysis and modeling

Transients can cause significant damage to pipes and equipment, risk the safety of utility operators and the population in general, facilitate the intrusion of contaminants, and interrupt service to customers. Using a transient analysis software product helps utilities and engineers to find trouble spots and determine appropriate mitigation and control strategies.

HAMMER, an application originally created by Environmental Hydraulics Group (EHG) and now developed and supported by Bentley, claimed the No. 1 position in the transient analysis sub-category with 55% of market share. KYPIPE's Surge and MWHSoft's InfoSurge came second and third respectively.

3. Wastewater conveyance systems modeling

Sewer utilities and municipalities managing wastewater collection rely on wastewater conveyance modeling software for sanitary sewer infrastructure master planning, overflow remediation analysis, and network design and rehabilitation among other applications.

A steady-state model, Bentley's SewerCAD, is the most popular product in this category with 42% of market share. EPA-SWMM, a dynamic model developed by USEPA claimed the second position with 15% while XP-SWMM from XP-Software came third with 11%. SewerGEMS, Bentley's fully-dynamic offering, was right behind with 8% of market share.

4. Stormwater networks modeling

Software for modeling stormwater networks helps engineers to cost-effectively design pipes and inlets, analyze drainage and detention facilities, develop stormwater master plans, perform water quality studies, and prioritize the rehabilitation of existing systems.

Solutions developed by Bentley, USEPA, and scored the top positions in this category. StormCAD is the most popular product with 43% of market share, followed by EPA-SWMM, and Hydraflow Storm Sewers.

5. Detention pond design and modeling

Land developers, site design engineers, and stormwater professionals use detention pond design and modeling software to model watersheds hydrology, deliver site stormwater site designs, perform regional drainage studies, develop pre- and post-development studies, and design detention pond facilities.

Hydraflow Hydrographs by Intelisolve is the No. 1 product in this category followed by Bentley's PondPack. Together these two products own 83% of market share for this category. HydroCAD by HydroCAD Software Solutions and AdICPR by Streamline Technologies share a third place in the pond detention design and analysis category.

6. Floodplain analysis and river analysis

Engineers and agencies involved in floodplain management studies use modeling software to model water surface profiles in natural and man-made river channels, simulate watershed precipitation-runoff processes, carry on floodplain regulation studies, and develop dam break levee breaching analyses among other applications.

The US Army Corps of Engineers' Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) develops the top two products in this category, HEC-RAS and HEC-HMS, with a combined market share of 91%. Bentley's HEC-Pack, based on technology from HEC, is third in this list followed by DHI's MIKE11 and Wallingford's InfoWorks RS.

7. General hydraulics tools

Also called hydraulic calculators, these are generally simple applications that perform a range of hydraulic and hydrological calculations for simple elements including culverts, pipe and channel segments, inlets, weirs, and orifices.

Two Bentley applications, FlowMaster and CulvertMaster, obtained the top two spots with a combined market share of 82%. Intelisolve's Hydraflow Express was third with 9%.

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MOST IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTES FOR WATER MODELERS

Vendors invest a great deal of time and money in research and development to create innovative tools and features that benefit their users and help them compete for market share. This concurrent effort leaves users with a large bullet list that makes the decision process fairly complex. So, what do water modelers actually look for when shopping for a water modeling software product?

Generic attributes

Ease of Use is the No. 1 requirement for water modeling software. Water modeling is complex by nature, so an easy to use product that facilitates the learning process and modeling workflows is an obvious top choice for water modelers.

The next five top requirements from the survey have to do with interoperability features that allow modelers to work across different platforms and share information with their colleagues and clients.

Water distribution attributes

Utilities and municipalities must guarantee proper flows and pressures to fight fires should they occur. Water distribution models help engineers determine the ability of their system to provide adequate protection against fires. Fire flow analysis was found to be the No. 1 aspect when selecting a water distribution modeling product.

What-if Scenarios and Alternatives is the second most wanted attribute for water distribution modeling. This feature empowers modelers to consider multiple operational, physical, and water consumption scenarios without creating multiple models.

Wastewater and stormwater attributes

Attributes typical of new system design projects are included in the top requirements for wastewater and stormwater networks: Steady-state simulations, the modified rational method, and automatic design features.

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ABOUT WATER MODELING VENDORS

In this section respondents were asked about their perception and opinion about the main software vendors in this industry.

Ease of use, as the No. 1 requirement for water modeling (see previous section), was the focus of one of the questions. Products from Bentley are the easiest to use with 52% of the votes. Intelisolve and XP-Software products obtained the second and third places with 22% and 11% respectively.

Bentley was also voted as the top leading innovator in this industry with 53% of the votes. Bentley's Haestad Methods product line has provided water modeling solutions to the industry since 1979. XP-Software is perceived as second in the innovation category while Intelisolve and MWHSoft share the third place.

More users would recommend Bentley products than products from any other vendor. Intelisolve was second in this category, and tied in third place are XP-Software and MWHSoft.

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ABOUT MODELING PLATFORMS AND WORK ENVIRONMENTS

Interoperability was found to be the second user requirement right behind ease of use (see previous section). Interoperability features include integration with CAD and GIS platforms, import/export features with industry standards such as EPANET, SWMM, LandXML, DXF, PDF, etc.), and data connections with civil design solutions like InRoads, AutoCAD Civil 3D, and others.

The majority of modeling products come in a stand-alone version with built-in layout and editing tools that allows modelers to perform every modeling task without requiring a CAD or GIS platform to be executed. The stand-alone environment is the most used modeling environment based on the survey results.

CAD environments are the second most used in this industry closely behind stand-alone solutions. CAD-based environments allow modelers to leverage the drafting and layout capabilities of products like AutoCAD or MicroStation to create, edit, execute and analyze hydraulic and hydrology models. Users benefit from added functionality that the CAD platform provides, but licenses need to be maintained in addition to the actual water modeling products license.

Similarly to CAD-based environments, GIS-based products require an available license of a GIS platform (ArcGIS, MapInfo, Bentley Map, etc.) to be able to use the modeling application. Although there is a growing trend among utilities and municipalities to adopt GIS-based applications, this type of models was found to be the least popular based on this survey results.

When looking at simultaneous use of modeling platforms the majority of respondents, 77% of them, generally use at least two of these platforms depending on the requirements of each project. 14% claimed they only use stand-alone platforms, 8% only use CAD-based platforms, and 1% exclusively uses a GIS-based platform.

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