Chicago selects InfoWorks CS for city-wide sewer model
Posted: Thursday 13th September 2007
The City of Chicago Department of Water Management and its consultants CDM, MWH and CH2M Hill are using InfoWorks CS from Wallingford Software to create Chicago’s first city-wide hydraulic and hydrology model of its trunk sewers.
InfoWorks CS was chosen following a selection process that included two other well-known software products. The key reasons for selecting InfoWorks CS included its data management capabilities and its adaptability to meet particular hydraulics and hydrology modeling needs of the Chicago area.
"The Wallingford Software package, InfoWorks CS, was able to integrate our existing GIS data and manage the updates and changes to the system while maintaining flexibility with our asset management options," says Department of Water Management Assistant Commissioner Pete Mulvaney.
InfoWorks will assist in developing a better understanding of the trunk sewer system’s hydraulics and will play an important part in future planning of facilities and the analysis of alternative options. CDM, MWH and CH2M Hill are working as a single team on the project. Completion of the model’s development has taken less than a year and the first modeling simulations are underway.
The Department of Water Management supplies potable water and sewer services to the City of Chicago. There are some 4,400 miles (7.080km) of combined sewers in Chicago’s gravity-based system. This is linked to deeper large sewer systems - maintained by a treatment agency – that intercept flows and convey them to treatment works.
There is also a network of 109 miles (175km) of large-diameter tunnels, known as TARP – Tunnel and Reservoir Plan – which are operated by the Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. The tunnels were built to overcome the problems of flooding caused from unmanageable quantities of wastewater during storms. They intercept the combined sewer overflow and are designed to convey flows to large reservoirs for storage until the storm has subsided.
Potable water supplied by the Department is sourced entirely from Lake Michigan, with approximately 1 billion gallons distributed on an average day (3.8 million m3/day) to the 4.5 million population. The network has about 4,400 miles (7,080km) of pipes and tunnels, 12 pump stations and two purification plants. Historically, managing stormwater in Chicago also includes river reversals to protect the drinking water supply.
