World leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, Bentley Systems has announced the immediate availability of its WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, and HAMMER V8i (SELECTseries 5) information modelling software for the analysis and design of water distribution systems.

Key BIM advancements in the software extend information mobility across water system planning, design and operations, improving collaboration within and between these phases of the infrastructure lifecycle, and facilitating better decision making for enhanced project and system performance.

New real-time-based simulation capabilities in the SELECTseries 5 releases of WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, and HAMMER V8i improve visibility, forecasting, and decision-making support for both modellers and operators. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data can be automatically imported by system modellers into their hydraulic models for use as initial conditions. System operators benefit from the ability to publish model results to the utility’s existing SCADA system control screen, helping forecast operating conditions.

Gregg Herrin, Bentley Systems director, product management, hydraulics and hydrology, explains that engineers have for 10 years, used the SCADAconnect capabilities within WaterCAD and WaterGEMS to leverage valuable field information by integrating a utility’s SCADA system with the hydraulic models. With the SELECTseries 5 releases, Bentley Systems has further enhanced information mobility across engineering and operations. Model results can now be published to the utility’s existing SCADA system control screen using the industry-standard OPC communication protocol, enabling system operators to benefit from optioneering as they evaluate and visualise model predictions directly in the user interface they employ regularly.

The SELECTseries 5 releases enable WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, and HAMMER users to view both real-time and historical SCADA data, and compare data between SCADA and model results. Strong visualisation tools empower hydraulic modellers to monitor SCADA signals as they change in response to real-time events to help them see events as they happen and improve decision making.

Unlike software that aggregates water usage data from multiple water customers to a single spatial location, the WaterCAD and WaterGEMS V8i (SELECTseries 5) software explicitly models water demands for individual water customers in their correct physical locations. This provides modellers with better visibility and control over where demands are allocated, helping them manage those demands with finer granularity.

Additional capabilities of the SELECTseries 5 releases include: WaterCAD and WaterGEMS users can run multi-species water quality analyses; HAMMER users can run multiple scenarios as a batch run, similar to the batch run functionality in WaterCAD and WaterGEMS; WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, and HAMMER users can publish hydraulic models (including results) as i-models for use in Bentley Map Mobile, an app that works on Android, iPad, and iPad mini tablets; and model from within the latest versions of MicroStation, AutoCAD (including AutoCAD 2015), and (except WaterCAD) ArcGIS (including ArcGIS 10.2).