Corpus Christi, TX, chooses InfoWater for GIS water modeling, unidirectional flushing

• Prominent Texas city and key American port opts for MWH Soft InfoWater and InfoWater UDF

BROOMFIELD, CO, May 6, 2009 -- MWH Soft, a leading global provider of environmental and water resources applications software, today announced that the City of Corpus Christi Water Department in Texas has chosen MWH Soft's industry-leading InfoWater Executive Suite and InfoWater UDF software as its advanced water distribution modeling and maintenance solution. The decision helps the utility leverage its investment in ArcGIS technology from ESRI (Redlands, CA) by giving it the most technologically advanced GIS-centric software platform available for managing and operating its water distribution system.

The City of Corpus Christi Water Department serves nearly 500,000 citizens of Corpus Christi and the Coastal Bend area of southeast Texas. They maintain over 900,000 acre-feet (1.1 km3) of storage in two local reservoirs and supplement their supply from Lake Texana via a 101 mile (163 km) long, 64 inch (164 cm) diameter pipeline. The department annually treats 28 billion gallons (106 billion liters) of water and operates five pumping stations, four elevated storage tanks, and 1,600 miles (2,575 km) of water line.

"The MWH Soft InfoWater software suite was a perfect fit for our needs in Corpus Christi," said Mark Van Vleck, the city's Assistant Water Director. "It gives us the ability to build, calibrate and analyze complex water models in the fastest time possible -- all while working in the ArcGIS environment. We can then use the InfoWater UDF module to leverage our modeling work, creating detailed flushing sequences and easily managing a unidirectional flushing program for our entire service area. These tools will be a significant help in improving our system maintenance and operations, prolonging system life, and greatly enhancing customer service."

InfoWater is a fully GIS integrated network modeling and design application using the latest Microsoft .NET and ESRI ArcObjects component technologies. While it addresses all the operations of a typical water distribution system, the software also helps engineers develop better, higher-quality designs and capital improvement programs by quickly and accurately performing the most difficult hydraulic analyses -- including multi-point and extended period fire flow simulations, variable speed pumps, and very advanced water quality calculations. Users can then employ a rich array of ArcGIS presentation tools to powerfully showcase the results.

The InfoWater Executive Suite adds powerful functionality to the InfoWater platform. Users can perform leakage detection modeling (LDM) using the industry standard step-test method; find the optimum location for water quality sensors or sampling (SLM); automatically delineate and summarize pertinent information for each pressure zone (PZM) in their system; and view all modeling results directly in Google Earth or other KML compatible applications (NetVIEW).

InfoWater UDF, which runs on the InfoWater platform, allows utilities to quickly develop a comprehensive, reliable and cost-effective unidirectional flushing program. This technique has proven to help improve water quality by restoring the disinfectant residual, reducing bacterial regrowth, dislodging biofilms, removing sediments and deposits, controlling corrosion, restoring flows and pressures, eliminating taste and odor problems, and reducing disinfectant demand throughout the system.

The software accurately considers the temporal variation in flow velocity magnitude and direction caused by changes in demands, tank levels and operating conditions. It also computes minimum flushing time, total flushing volume and pipe length; flushing velocity of every pipe in the sequence; and available fire flow at the minimum residual pressure. The hydraulic impact of each flushing sequence is monitored to ensure the desired minimum pressure is maintained throughout the system.

"Our commitment to providing the fastest, most feature-rich, and strongest GIS integrated water modeling, operational, and capital planning tools continues to pay unprecedented dividends for MWH Soft customers," said MWH Soft Vice President of Sales and Client Relations J. Erick Heath, P.E. "The City of Corpus Christi is just the latest example of a cutting-edge water utility that has chosen InfoWater as its engineering GIS package. Using this advanced technology is the most cost-effective way to bolster system operations today and make better plans for the future."

MWH Soft is a leading global provider of technical and infrastructure software and professional solutions designed to meet the technological needs of utilities, government industries, and engineering organizations worldwide.

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