Industry Summary Articles

Innovyze announced the worldwide release of the V4.5 Generation of IWLive, a major new version of its real-time water network modeling solution featuring significant new and extended capabilities driven by input from Innovyze customers. The new release reinforces Innovyze’s commitment to offering proven, best-of-class solutions to address the business drivers for smart water grids of today and tomorrow.

A complete real-time network hydraulic and water quality modeling, monitoring, forecasting and SCADA integration software, IWLive equips water utility operators with tools that are both predictive and reactive. It continuously assesses system performance and alerts operators to problems that may arise in the coming minutes, hours, or days, allowing them to quickly determine their severity and the time of onset and develop reliable response strategies to minimize downstream effects. 

Designed for use in the water distribution control room, IWLive gives operators unprecedented decision making ability in developing real-time response strategies. They can run accurate hydraulic simulations that factor in energy costs, weather, real time or delayed SCADA telemetry, demand history, valve and pumping control scenarios. Beyond increasing operational efficiency and reducing energy consumption, IWLive can help operators understand the impact of their systems on CO₂ emissions as well as the effects of main breaks, pump and reservoir shutdowns, and other scheduled maintenance.

The fully optimized IWLive interface allows operators to see a map of all water infrastructures, including background maps. Highlighted color coding shows predicted problem areas; a single click produces a detailed map showing pipes, valves, pumps, reservoirs and other water assets. Animation of the map shows the development of the problem, while graphs show simulated pressures and reservoir levels. IWLive can be accessed remotely over a VPN, and configured to send critical warning messages via SMS or email.

V4.5 is packed with user-requested enhancements and several innovative capabilities that further enhance user productivity. Operators now benefit from a new Zones Tab that allows the division of networks into user-defined areas, letting them instantly view warnings for each part of a network and quickly select and zoom into areas of particular interest. It also includes a new method of reporting called Dashboards, a collection of user-defined graphical components used to instantly display a high level overview based on the results of queries run on a network or live data. Dashboard’s layout can be customized to suit organizational requirements and can be displayed either within IWLive or exported to a number of common formats. In particular, the ability to automatically update dashboards at specified intervals and export them in HTML allows high level results to be published to a web server and viewed outside the IWLive environment.

The new version also includes a number of enhancements to database connectivity, enabling the solution to seamlessly integrate with a utility’s existing IT infrastructure. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) provides a standard software interface for accessing almost any industry-compliant database management system. Moreover, a new ability to automatically export IWLive results to a database following a simulation, along with four new types of export, greatly expands the flexibility with which organizations can use the powerful capabilities of IWLive.

For a complete listing of new features and capabilities in IWLive V4.5, visit the “What’s New” section in the online help.

“Today, water utilities need to be able to fully maximize their data to power all decision making,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F.ASCE, President, COO and Chief Technical Officer of Innovyze. “With an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, enhanced performance, advanced analytics and unrivaled depth, IWLive V4.5 is the industry’s real-time smart water network modeling solution for support of operational, emergency response, and water system planning goals. It enables water utilities worldwide to improve their system performance and reliability, enhance customer service, save money, safeguard critical infrastructures, avoid or eliminate the effects of negative events, and maximize their ability to protect public health.”