Barwon Water is a major water authority in the state of Victoria, Australia providing water and sewerage services to the City of Geelong and surrounding areas providing service to a population of over 500,000 people as well as significant industry.

In 2024, Barwon Water opted to change water supply network modelling platforms from WaterGEMS to InfoWorks WS Pro. This change necessitated the conversion of existing models with Urban Water Solutions selected to undertake this work.

The conversion process involved creating an EPANET INP file from the WaterGEMS model and importing it into InfoWorks WS Pro. Urban Water Solutions then compared the minimum pressures for all nodes, and the maximum flows and velocities for all pipes. Flows, upstream pressure and downstream pressure at all control assets, pump stations, pressure reducing valves, etc., for the entire simulation period were also reviewed, and the relevant settings and parameters of these were adjusted to reconcile any discrepancies identified between the two model outputs.

Urban Water Solutions was able to demonstrate that the pressures and flows produced by the InfoWorks WS Pro model were consistent with the results from WaterGEMS simulations. Once this was achieved, the models were enhanced with the addition of customer points for each meter connection to replace the lumped nodal demands used in the WaterGEMS models. Customer demands and profiles can now be readily updated to reflect recent water consumption data.

The model conversions were completed successfully for 6 individual water networks with more to follow.