Integrated Use of City's GIS Data and Hydraulic Model Development

Abstract

With the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the wealth of GIS data available, creating and updating a City’s water system model can become a less daunting process. In today’s hydraulic modeling software market, several hydraulic modeling packages integrated with GIS currently exist; however, these packages can come with a hefty price tag. With the right resources and a little ingenuity, a City’s existing hydraulic model, previously developed using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s EPANET, was updated utilizing existing GIS data and ESRI’s ArcGIS software. The City of Houston’s Geographic Information & Management System (GIMS) daily maintains the City’s utility GIS datasets including information on its water infrastructure. Working with a subsection of the water system, LAN pioneered a method to update the existing EPANET model based on the latest GIMS water system data. Part of the project entailed skeletonization of the water system to reduce the dataset to all water lines six inches and larger and development of GIS Geodatabases to manage the various datasets. The project also involved allocation of water demands through use of Thiessen Polygons in GIS.