MWH Soft, a leading global innovator of wet infrastructure modeling and simulation software and technologies, today announced that its recently released InfoWorks ICM for integrated river, sewer and overland flow modeling is being quickly adopted across the United Kingdom. Water utilities, local authorities and engineering firms are proving eager to harness the advanced solution’s industry-leading capabilities on a range of new and existing projects.

Following a number of serious floods in the UK such as the one in the Cornish town of Boscastle in 2004, the UK government announced a mandate to “set out a portfolio of approaches to ensure that flood risks would be managed more effectively in the future by adopting a holistic, joined-up, and integrated approach.” The UK Flood Risk Regulations of 2009 and the Floods and Water Management Act of 2010 require each local authority to “develop, maintain, apply and monitor a strategy for local flood risk management in its area,” and stipulate that where flooding occurs, they must investigate what should be done and by whom. Within this new, more stringent context, InfoWorks ICM has been a clear choice for developers of the required Surface Water Management Plans and Flood Risk Assessment Reports.

A hallmark of InfoWorks ICM is the integration of hydrodynamic and hydrological models within the powerful workgroup management platform to enable comprehensive assessment of the environmental impact from urban catchments on the receiving waters and sound planning of wet weather discharges in urban drainage systems. InfoWorks ICM provides a single simulation engine that fully integrates one-dimensional (1-D) hydrodynamic simulation of flows in rivers, open channels and pipe networks with two-dimensional (2-D) hydrodynamic simulation of surface flooding in the urban environment and river floodplain. This industry-leading development provides a powerful solution for simultaneously modeling below-ground and above-ground elements of catchments to accurately represent all flow paths and improve understanding of the processes occurring in the holistic environment. The software also takes into account interactions of natural and man-made environments and effectively simulates the water quality impact of polluting runoff and effluent from urban areas. Such advanced capabilities greatly enhance the ability of water utilities to conceive and evaluate sound and reliable urban catchment strategies such as storm sewer separation, active real-time control and provision of adequate additional storage.

“What attracted us to Infoworks ICM was the ability to model interlinked above- and below-ground systems that include infiltration type Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS), watercourses and tidal outfalls,” commented Jason Wakefield, Drainage Engineer for Ipswich Borough Council, UK. “The ability to output flood maps, including Hazard Ratings, and the flexible pricing structure were also key factors in our purchase. We believe InfoWorks ICM will be very useful for developing and managing long-term Surface Water Management Plans, especially where SUDS are a component.”

InfoWorks ICM builds on MWH Soft’s powerful workgroup management modeling platform and complements it with a host of new technological enhancements. While it supports the running of model simulations on stand-alone workstations, simulation can be distributed to take maximum advantage of settings where more computing resources are available, either within a small workgroup or within an enterprise system with dedicated servers and central storage. Advanced database and processing technologies allow InfoWorks ICM to deliver real power to end users when modeling large networks under a wide range of scenarios, producing a higher level of detail than ever before and a high degree of confidence in the ultimate results. Support for the latest 64-bit Windows operating systems and multiprocessor workstations allow complex simulations to be accomplished more quickly and efficiently. The option to employ increasingly affordable specialized graphics cards offers the potential for significant improvement in the speed of 2D simulations. An easy-to-use scenario manager allows the user to quickly apply different “what if” scenarios to the base network model.

“InfoWorks ICM gives us the cutting-edge technology we need to provide the finest engineering solutions to our customers,” said Richard Allitt, Director of Richard Allitt Associates. “By allowing us to model all sources of flooding in a single software package, these advances set the product apart from those offered by other vendors.”

“We are delighted that InfoWorks ICM has quickly been adopted as the software of choice for integrated flood modeling by leading UK utilities, local authorities and engineering consultancies,” said Andrew Brown, EMEA Regional Manager for MWH Soft. “We are committed to continually delivering leading-edge solutions to water industry professionals, enabling them to meet the challenges they face in the most reliable, efficient and cost effective manner.”