Using Sensor Data to Drive Dynamic Hydraulic Models in InfoWater Pro with Info360 Insight

NATHAN GERDTS: Hello. Welcome. We're going to jump into our talk on using sensor data to drive dynamic models in InfoWater Pro with Info360 Insight. There are three of us guest speakers today. My name is Nathan Gertdts. I'm the Autodesk product manager of our water distribution products, and that includes InfoWater Pro, which is one of the products we'll be featuring today. I'll hand it over to Ayden to introduce yourself.

AYDEN BARAN: Hello. My name is Ayden Baran. I'm a water distribution and analytics project manager and happy to have a conversation with you today about the integration of InfoWater Pro and Info360.

SHAWN HUANG: My name is Shawn Huang. I am the software development manager for InfoWater Pro. Thank you.

NATHAN GERDTS: All right. So before we jump in, I just want to mention our safe harbor statement. In case we make any forward-looking statements about software capabilities that are not available yet today, please don't make any purchasing decisions based on those statements as we never know what will happen in the future.

And so just a quick overview of what we'll be talking about today-- we'll introduce some challenges and opportunities, namely in the water distribution side of the industry for operations teams. And then we'll talk about ways that operational modeling can be achieved and how that can address those issues. And then we focus on a number of different use cases and examples of how we see that being used with our tools in the industry. And then we'll wrap it up with some resources and Q&A.

So jumping into challenges and opportunities-- and again, this is focused on water distribution operations, so starting off, one of the biggest, most obvious challenges is when water is lost. And there's actually 6 billion gallons of treated water that's lost every day in the US alone, and that is due to pipe breaks as well as leakage. And again, this is water that is sourced. It's treated. It's pressurized. It's distributed. So there's a lot of waste beyond just the water going out into the environment. And there's a picture of a typical pipe break.

One of the other aspects is energy costs. The pump stations that move water throughout cities consume a huge amount of energy. It takes up about 30% of a water utility's total O&M, operations and maintenance, budget. So this is millions of dollars in many cases, and so if you can do that more efficiently, you can save a lot of money.

Number three is resilience. It's a always-important concept for every water utility. Many utilities are investing a lot in their asset management plans and finding ways to make sure their system is more resilient in case of failures. One way that this is being addressed is through lots of pipe replacements as infrastructure is aging, and so a sample metric of that is that there are 12,000 miles of pipe that are replaced every year in the US.

And then finally is water quality is always top of mind for operations teams. And fortunately, this is pretty rare that there are water quality issues, but it is always a serious issue when there are water quality problems that go out to customers. And though it's a small number, no water utility ever wants any failures, but 0.8% of the US population served has had a serious violation in the last year in terms of the source water where they come from. So it does happen, so it is often top of mind for many municipalities.

So one of the tools that can help solve some of these different challenges is hydraulic modeling, and what is hydraulic modeling? It's really a numerical representation of fluid flows throughout the system. So you're simulating where's flow going, where is there pressure. The AWWA cites that hydraulic models are typically developed to show a snapshot of a utility system for master planning purposes and to run "what if" scenarios.

So there are a number of different applications of hydraulic models. You can use them to ensure that there's adequate fire flow to all of the hydrants in your system. It especially helps with master planning for future growth. If you know that your city is going to be growing a lot, maybe in Northeast corner, for example, where you have new expansion, you may need to be planning new large transmission mains, maybe a new treatment plant to accommodate that growth.

Oftentimes they can be used for water quality studies to look at how is water cycling through the system. Are there areas where there's high water age and low chlorine residuals in the system? Hydraulic models can also be used to even inform asset management. You could be looking at different criticality cases. If a pipe were to break, what would be the impact that can help you drive the risk and decision-making prioritization around certain aging assets?

And another case where we've seen is simply in supporting operations. Operations teams may have questions when they have to do maintenance on a tank, for example. They may need to drain one of their tanks to do maintenance, so they might use the model to plan out what season that's done in, what kind of mitigation strategies do we need to adjust our pumping operations in different ways. So that's how models can be used.

And so how about using models in general with operational modeling? In general, we see this as somewhat rare due to a number of challenges that really prevent it from becoming common practice. The first is data access, namely hydraulic modelers, they often don't have easy access to the SCADA data, to the sensor data.

Or maybe they can get it, but it's in a format that comes in dumps in maybe Excel or maybe even something even less friendly. And then you have to preprocess it to get it usable, and then you may have to import it and connect it to your model. So that usually requires a lot of process and permission requesting, for example.

And then once you are trying to update your model, that can also be a really risky task because just simply trying to update your model from GIS, sometimes-- and most often-- the data coming in is not perfect. And when there are disconnections in the data, sometimes hydraulic engines can be especially finicky about handling those issues, and it can throw off convergence and numerical stability. And so sometimes calibration is often cited as one of the most difficult things that hydraulic modelers need to do. So simply keeping your model up to date with what is in the ground today can often be a challenge.

And then finally, if you do have all of that in place and you have a model that is reliable and up to date, oftentimes it's only really experienced modelers that have access to that desktop modeling software or know how to wield the model to make good decisions. And so these are some of the things that hold operations teams back from being able to use operational modeling.

So in this next section, we're going to talk more about operational modeling. What are the tools that are available? And how can we start to achieve operational modeling and overcome some of those challenges? Before jumping into that, I just want to give you an overall perspective.

In the Autodesk water team, we have a portfolio of different products. We have tools for water distribution, wastewater, stormwater, as well as cloud SaaS-based solutions for asset management and operational analytics. And in today's talk, we're talking about these two distant corners, InfoWater Pro and Info360 Insight.

So next, we're actually going to introduce each of those products, and then really, the core of the talk today is talking about how when you can combine these products, these enable you to achieve operational dynamic modeling. And with that, you can create a digital twin of your system, so you can then have a digital representation to try out different things that represents how your system would behave under varying contexts.

And that helps you reduce your operational risk in terms of a number of different things, and it also can help you reduce your operating costs. And so with that, we'll start with the introduction of InfoWater Pro, so I will hand it over to Shawn for that.

SHAWN HUANG: Thank you, Nathan. InfoWater Pro is a powerful hydraulic simulation tool for the water utilities and consulting companies. It is fully compatible with USEPA EPANET 2.2 plus with many other advanced features, such as VSP control and pressure-dependent demands.

InfoWater Pro is also seamlessly integrated with Esri's ArcGIS Pro and also offer many geospatial-centric features. InfoWater is a comprehensive solution with many customizable extensions which ranges from model build, troubleshooting tools and result review and calibration, even forecasting.

So why we use for InfoWater Pro? Because it is the industry-leading tool for the master planning. For example, most digital twin presentations at AWWA 2024 were based on the hydraulic models developed with InfoWater Pro. It is trustworthy because Autodesk customer success team for InfoWater Pro is really knowledgeable and capable of facilitating knowledge sharing in the technical community.

InfoWater Pro is also really flexible. Users are able to create their own combinations of different features in order to deliver their projects. InfoWater Pro is also very open and transparent, so users are able to open all the model input files through the Excel spreadsheet to verify what the change is recently. So with that, I will pass it over to Ayden.

AYDEN BARAN: Thank you, Shawn. So now let's learn a bit about Info360 Insight. Autodesk Info360 Insight is a cloud-based digital twin solution for operational analytics, incident management, and compliance reporting. This platform would help you to access data more conveniently and efficiently. You can stream live data, live sensor data, clean and scrub the data more easily, and automate all types of data manipulation, such as data aggregation transfer and doing different types of analytics.

You can create multiple types of workspaces and dashboards to represent your data and analytics to provide the basis for better and effective data-driven decision-making. With various built-in water data tools, you can perform mass balance, drive different types of patterns from your water system, and create forecasts for near and long-term future. You can also create different types of reports that can be sent to environmental monitoring agencies and publish your model results into the platform that can be shared with all of the stakeholders.

Here is an example of how a typical workspace looks like. You can see different types of graphs and dashboards. On the right, you see a histogram of total water consumption with seven-day moving average. On the top left, you saw a map with the system that is configurable to your liking that works pretty much like ArcGIS.

You see here gauges that are showing various types of water quality metrics, and by clicking on this small arrow that you saw, you can check the graphs and see how they look like. Of course, you can export all of these into CSV and Excel to create dedicated workspaces for them.

And over there, also you saw a pie chart, and at the end, we had a zonal demand created for each DMA. You can also hover on that and see the values on each graph, and you can also use a small bar to focus on the period of your interest.

All of these options that Info360 Insight provides you will enable you to build a water data culture in your organization. It will help you to improve your service delivery, maximize your operations and resources, and of course, support you with making data-driven decisions.

So there are many use cases for Info360. Here I'm mentioning two big use cases. The first one is the BI in the cloud. There would be a single source of truth for a SCADA or any other sources of data that you can bring into Info360. There would be a collaborative environment where all of the stakeholders, based on their level of access, can read data and also access to the analytics and reports. And there is bespoke water-focused tools and analytics that can do calculations that typically require lots of resources to accomplish.

The second use case is hydraulic model integration. You can use Info360 Insight alongside InfoWater Pro to do hydraulic simulation, calibrate and validate your model, and publish your model and the results back into Info360 Insight for the stakeholders to use.

So now the question is how to use InfoWater Pro and Info360 Insight to create a dynamic operation modeling system. In traditional workflow, we get all of the data files in different formats from various sources of data. We typically do some cleanup, organize them, prepare them to use for model build calibration and creating different types of scenarios and, of course, creating the final report.

Many of these data organization are done using Excel or local scripts created by engineers that are typically not well documented or distributed. Typically for calibrating a model, you import the data, run the model, export the results, compare it with the observed data, change the parameter to reach the better calibrated metrics. And all of these are typically done in a manual fashion. So now the idea is how we can automate this, and at the end, the model delivery itself is also-- is done separated from all of these efforts.

So improved workflow basically bypasses all of the data scrubbing part and focuses on building the model with more reliable data as well as integration of the data into InfoWater Pro directly. As I mentioned, typically for calibrating model, you import the data, run the model, export the results, compare it with the observed data, and change the parameter in the model to reach the better calibration metric and do this over and over and over.

With automating this workflow, with this improved workflow, all of these steps are done inside InfoWater Pro, and you don't need to export the data outside to a spreadsheet or other tools to compare with the observed data. You can do all of this within InfoWater Pro.

And the cool thing is that you can export and deliver and publish the results and the model into Info360, so stakeholders can focus on what is important rather than scrolling down a hundred pages of PDFs to find out what is important and what is happening in the system. And with that, I pass it to the next speaker.

SHAWN HUANG: Thank you, Ayden. So next, I'm going to cover how InfoWater Pro integrates with Info360. So InfoWater Pro works with Info360 primarily with through this tool called a Live Data Adapter, LDA. So we can map Info360 sensors to InfoWater Pro model elements through this dialogue.

And sensors can be fixed types, such as flow, pressure, or velocity. It could be custom type, such as a pressure setting, flow setting, or TCV percent open. And for each sensor, we are able to specify the unit or the scaling factor and then the offset values.

The initial and boundary conditions of the InfoWater Pro model can be updated by Info360 sensors. Therefore, a sensor is assigned a model influence type, as shown in the bottom right. So there are three model influence type for a sensor because some sensors probably just for comparison only, for example, pressure, and some sensors could be used to initialize the model, for example, tank level, some valve status or pump status. And there are some sensors can influence the model continuously, such as the water consumption.

So with the Live Data Adapter, we are also able to utilize Info360's multiple sensor data to scale the demand of a system or a given pressure zone. With this, we are able to map the mass balance results to a specific model pattern, and that is based on a mass balance analysis from the Info360. And this demand scaling feature can account for the temporal variation and also spatial variation.

Info360 data can be grouped into a SCADA event through the SCADA Event Manager. So here, the user is able to create any SCADA event with a specified timeframe, and multiple SCADA events can be created for different simulation purposes.

Once the live data adapter settings has been done, we can go to InfoWater Pro's Run Manager to simulate with SCADA data. So first, we need to connect to Info360 hub, and then in the SCADA tab of the Run Manager, we can choose the Info360 as the SCADA input data file option.

And then we go to SCADA Event Manager to specify a SCADA event and then also turn on the option to refresh the boundary conditions, such as the demands in a tank level. And then we hit Simulation, run it, and then we are able to review all the results and also compare with the Info360 sensor data.

So Live Data Adapter also includes this gap analysis tool. So for the user to compare the simulated results and sensor measurements. So we can compare them as a group or individually, and it also provides some statistical results for the user to evaluate. Besides that, we have the Report Manager InfoWater Pro feature. It can compare the alignment results with any live data with a given varying frame.

So with trial and errors, the InfoWater Pro monitors are able to tweak the model from left to right to match the model condition with the sensor data. So next, we will cover a number of use cases. In our first, we will turn it over to Ayden for this ongoing model validation use case.

AYDEN BARAN: Thank you, Shawn. So how an ongoing model validation would look like? What you see here is a typical real-time modeling and continuous calibration that was adopted from AWWA's handbook for water distribution system modeling calibration.

Now, with Info360 and InfoWater Pro integration, we can get the data directly from a SCADA, including demand notes, create mass balance patterns, get the boundary conditions, and put all of that directly into InfoWater Pro, run simulations, compare it with observed data within InfoWater Pro without exiting the software, using the gap analysis, as Shawn mentioned, and, after calibrating and validating the model, publish the model and results back into Info360.

So my message for you today is that now we have a platform to get closer to the digital twin idea. With the workflow we showed, we are bridging the gap between SCADA data and hydraulic modeling, and we can streamline model calibration and validation workflow.

SHAWN HUANG: So next, I will cover this use case of anomaly detection. So a water system is usually designed to operate in a normal way and which can be often described by the system schematic, and a good hydraulic model can produce the results that matches system schematic.

Sometimes the system can operate out of expectation, and it requires much more attention and efforts to investigate. So with a digital twin system, users can easily detect anomalies and put the issue into a proper timeframe and also investigate it on the map. And with the anomaly detection experiences, water utilities would get a deeper and deeper understanding how their water system behaves hydraulically.

So here, we got some examples about anomaly detections. So first, in the dashboard, users can detect some anomalies related to tank level. Those could be the tank level shows a constant line, even the tank flow is varying, or the tank level could be just out of the bounds a lot.

So first, the user would need to check if the tank matches the system schematic, and next, they can run this InfoWater Pro model to check the tank level dynamics. And they are able to get these operating range out of the model, and for example, like here, on the bottom right, we got a constant tank sensor level. It means the sensor is malfunctional. So with that, the action is to ensure the sensors are working properly.

So the following anomalies are about the pressure control. So this diagram shows the pressure drops a lot in the hour 28 or 29 for no reasons, even almost at water cutoff. So why is it can be related to the pipeline repair work or the hydrant flushing work? The field crew closed some main line valves but forgot to reopen them until the work is done, so the action is, do you open those isolation valves to recover the pressure?

The water utilities valve operation is always risky because some valves are inoperable. Some valves are in unknown locations, and then the worst case is there are a lot of valves next to each other in the BG intersection. So the bottom right diagram, we are able to see there are two pressure zones. They merge to each other in terms of the hydraulic head, which is against the system schematic.

So what is the reason for that? It is the field crew supposedly to open a valve, but mistakenly, they open a zone valve that's supposedly should be closed all the time. So in order to restore the pressure zone boundary, we just have to go there, close the zone valve, and then it'll open the correct valve.

So the next use case is source tracing. Because water utilities receive the many customer complaints, such as color, odor, or tastes, to investigate those customer complaints, InfoWater Pro provides water quality simulation tools, such as the Water Age and Source Trace. So to resolve those water quality issues, water utilities can bring some cost-effective operational change, which also can be verified by the InfoWater Pro's simulation tool of Water Age and Source Trace.

With a Source Trace or Water Age tool, we are able to identify the pipes and tanks with near-zero flow. We can determine the extent of the poor water sources, and finally, we can design the operational change to improve the water quality and understand it in a better way.

So when there is a customer complaint, the users of water utility, they want to run the water age simulation on their system so they are able to understand the water age dynamics in different locations. So if we see a large water age value, it means the water age is a lot with that chlorine residual. If the water age looks good, we can turn over to our multiple source trace to figure out the percentage of contribution of water from different sources.

The bottom-right diagram shows the percentage of water from different sources. Those percent values are varying with time, so for some time we can end up with 100% or almost 100% of water coming from a source with poor water quality. In order to resolve those water quality issues, the utilities is able to adjust the pumping to ensure the better cycle water and also better blending of different water sources and even clean the pipes through the flushing programs.

The much worse case is contamination. So if there is a contamination identified, the InfoWater Pro users are able to open a InfoWater Pro extension called Protector to define the location of the contamination and run the Event Trace to determine the affected area of the contamination and then notify those customers who are affected by the contamination and then also design the isolation zone and then clean those contaminated pipes. So with that, yeah, we can see the above workflow in the video.

NATHAN GERDTS: And now, moving on to the final two digital twin use cases, the first one will be postevent analysis. So this is where some sort of event has happened in the system. That could be a pipe break or a power outage at a pump station that can impact customers. And usually, these are cases where a utility may want to go back and further investigate what happened and what was the cause, how bad was the impact, maybe what even could have gone better if we would have operated differently. So digital twins can be helpful in these sorts of cases.

So one of the first steps when there is an event is, obviously, you can go back and look at the dashboards. If you're using Info360 Insight, you can configure alerts with varying analytic controls to look at different thresholds, including based on the net water usage from different areas. And then you can display that in dashboards, so you can compare the event with a typical day, for example.

That's a good starting point, but since we're connected to a model, you can now also replicate that event within InfoWater Pro, especially given the integration of how InfoWater Pro can update from sensor data. And once you can simulate that event, you can also then explore alternatives, like what if we do rezoning or we close or open certain valves or adjust our pumping operations? And then with that, you can then finally recommend an action plan for the future if this sort of event were to happen again.

And so the outcomes of this type of process is that you can learn from past incidents, and it can also help you streamline reporting. In some countries, utilities will be fined based on the number of impacted customers. And of course, you don't have pressure sensor at every customer, so in some cases, you may even need to use a model to then estimate how many customers were impacted by a certain event. And then finally, you can develop an action plan.

So let's take a look at, within InfoWater Pro-- of course, you could initially look at data in a dashboard, but we're going to start from where you maybe already have that data within Info360. How can you actually start to interact with it within InfoWater Pro? So I'm going to bring in that sensor data, look at the event, replicate it, and then you could then subsequently explore alternatives.

So here's my model, and again, at this point, maybe I've already calibrated my model. So here, I have my model. Of course, as a demo model, it matches exactly with my sensor data a little bit too well, but that's OK. This is a September 2023 event. I just looked at a tank and a key valve. Those are two key objects.

When I switch my event now to-- I selected a pipe break in October. You can see there's a jump in flow rate at that valve. So let's just see how the model can replicate that. So if I go to my Run Manager on the same model scenario and I select that pipe break event, I just activate the event-- and because it's now going to run with those same boundary conditions, it's going to use the same demand scaling patterns, I can just see if the model will then replicate that.

And so I just open up my dashboard again and click Refresh to refresh my model results, and you guessed it. As a demo, the model is able to bring in that scaled demand from that zone to match what the sensors were saying. But you can see also now the tanks are showing that they drain out to a bottom point soon after that pipe break, one tank a little bit later than the other.

So you can see we are replicating what the sensors say, and so now let's investigate a little further. So that was the valve we were just looking at, and if we look downstream from that valve, this is one of the junctions. So you can see that the model is picking up that demand, and now there's a subsequent drop in pressure at that junction, but it wasn't a very high drop in pressure.

So what if we were to explore a map of where there are minimum pressures? And here, you immediately see, actually, that the actual blue zone, if I just use my cursor to indicate where the pipe break was, there was a lot of scaled-up demand in this area automatically because of the inferred demand in that area. The actual impact happened more so in the upstream pressure zone, where there's higher elevation, because that's where the water comes from, a tank through a PRV.

And so once that tank hits empty, all of a sudden these multiple upstream zones are now significantly impacted, and so in that way, we've now replicated the event. We can explore the impacts. And so what are some other things that you could do? From here, you could configure different scenarios.

Maybe we want to confine that pipe break just to that one zone, so very simply, I could just close that valve that is allowing flow to drain out the tanks. And I could then at least keep two other zones still operating as needed. Better yet, I could even try to isolate it much further, would be the ideal situation if I could pinpoint that break. Within InfoWater Pro, you can also model the breaks directly. If the zonally averaged demand scaling isn't exactly what you're wanting to do, that's the automatic thing that will happen if there's suddenly a break that gets picked up by Info360.

In addition, if you believe that the issues were caused by a surge event, within InfoWater Pro, it comes with a transient analysis engine. So you could look at tripping certain pumps with a power outage and looking at the consequent shock waves of pressure that will happen throughout your system and see how bad and where that can occur. And finally, you could also consider rezoning. As I mentioned, maybe you want to open up certain flows to allow backflow to just minimize the impact with varying steps.

So has anyone done this in real life? Well, yes. Just two years ago, at an Autodesk University, we had a presentation by OHM Advisors. What happened was that there was a power outage at a pump station that caused a pressure transient event that led to a pipe break in a pretty large transmission main that ended up flooding a highway. The event was so bad that the city ended up turning to OHM Advisors to help set up their model to investigate and come up with an action plan.

So there was a large pressure transient event. It caused a critical failure. OHM Advisors was tapped to come in and help provide a good isolation strategy for this event and for future events. And ultimately, what they did was by setting up multiple analyzes within InfoWater Pro, they built what ended up becoming a dashboard that the city could use so that under varying scenarios that may happen, if there's a pipe break in this area, they have an action plan in terms of how to isolate and how to minimize that impact for dozens of potential scenarios that could come up in their system.

So that was postevent analysis, where we're looking in the past. What if we want to look into the future? Because that's obviously where we can have an immediate impact on the upcoming events. So we can call this operational forecasting. So with operational forecasting, the first thing you need is some way to derive and estimate what is going to happen in the future, and for water distribution systems, that starts with a forecasting your demand.

So you can forecast demand, which I'll show how you can do. Next, with that forecast demand, you can simulate. Obviously, you can explore varying alternatives because we showed how InfoWater Pro can use demands and your current initial conditions from Info360 to model things, and now you can explore alternatives. And then finally, you can share your results either through InfoWater Pro, or you can push those results to Info360.

And the outcomes of this is that you can reduce operational risk, and you can improve your operational performance, such as by lowering energy costs, which I'll explain a little further later. You could also improve water quality by potentially increasing your tank turnover, improving chlorine residuals, or even reducing nonrevenue water. If you can adjust your operating set points, you can actually reduce your average operating pressure and reduce background leakage and risk of pipe bursts.

So starting off with demand forecasting, this is a newer feature within Info360, and it builds off the fact that Info360, you can derive the water usage for any zone that you can isolate, including your whole system. So using multiple sensors, you can come up with the water usage for any area, and then you can use that signal to train AI.

You can also give it weather input in terms of temperature, precipitation. You can use that to train the AI to then predict what that water usage will be for any given time, and then you can automate it to schedule routine forecasting.

So let's jump in. It's found in the Tools area. We have a Demand Forecast tool. So here, we have a library of different forecasts that are set up. Let's just take a look at one of these. And if we go to the Configuration, it looks like this, just a few inputs to define. You can define your flow rate or usage. That can be from mass balance.

You can give it your weather feeds and then a time range of valid data you want to train on. And then once it trains, you can review the data, and currently, we offer four different AI models, different machine learning approaches. With my data, models three and four did not match very well. Models one and two happen to match very well, so you can visualize them, compare.

You can also review the statistics at the bottom. So here, we see model one had an R-squared of 99.2% for this particular data. And then once you're happy, you can deploy your model. So you can say, for example, run a forecast every hour, and I want a 15-minute time step, for example. And then with that, you now have consistently available forecasts of demand for as many DMAs or pressure zones as you have in Info360, and it's all available through Info360, which also can be viewed in dashboards. Or, of course, you can access that within InfoWater Pro.

So what would you do in InfoWater Pro? Well, one example is you might aim to reduce your energy operating costs. So with that kind of objective, you might simulate the forecast, review your current performance, and then you can create scenarios. Maybe you already have some multiple scenarios predefined with varying control strategies. And then you can just compare to see which one has the best-- the minimal energy costs or maybe pressure management if you're-- you could be modeling leakage through emitter coefficients, or you could be focusing on water quality.

So let's just take a look at what that might look like. So if I select a pump in InfoWater Pro, I can get various metrics on it, such as the efficiency, the power, and here the total energy cost. So with that one pump, I was getting around $72 to operate that pump today. Here, you can see I have energy tariff. In many cities, the tariffs will go up a little bit more in the evening when many people are running their air conditioning units, for example. So oftentimes energy is more expensive at certain times of the day.

So with that in mind, let's go ahead and just create a scenario where I'm going to tweak and adjust how that pump operates, and we'll see if we can bring down the cost. So I'm just going to clone my scenario, and then I'm going to adjust it. So I'll click OK. And now if I go back to that pump, I can begin to change its controls.

So for example, this is the control dialogue. Let's, for example, say that we want to fill up the tank right before that energy cost goes up. So I'm going to turn on the pump right at 3:00 PM, and maybe also I'm just going to try allowing the tank to drain a little bit further. Maybe that's kind of allowed in this day and this season, for example.

So if I make those two changes and run the model, it will load those results. Let's click on the pump and take a look. And so you can see now here we're spending a total of $50. So I just saved just $20 one pump, but it was within a couple minutes.

Let's just take a look at the energy curve for that pump. So we can take a look at the aggregated cost over time, so every time that pump is running, the total cost is going up. And I can overlay multiple scenarios, so let's just overlay our base scenario. And you can see that that is going up over time, especially-- it's a steeper slope during that time when the energy tariff is higher.

So that's a very simple example and a simple system of tweaking my forecast. Does anyone actually do this in real life? Well, we did have a case study, just as an example, in last year's AU, where we talked about Colorado Springs Utility. What they did was-- they were focused on improving their water quality, namely through better tank turnover, because they were looking at the possibility of needing to invest in a new chlorine booster station.

And so what they did was with live modeling, they're able to generate daily forecasts, employing certain logic, and then they reviewed it as a team to make sure to optimize how they cycle water through a tank, for example, not pumping during peak demands. And the outcomes were really good in terms of improving their chlorine residuals throughout their system downstream of that tank, and with that, they're able to save money from capital improvements and overall achieve a positive improvement in how they operate their system, all by being able to review those forecasts and agree on a set plan each day.

And with that, that wraps up our use cases. So let's talk about some resources as we close out the session. So if Info360 Insight is new to you and you're interested, you can actually take a free tour on our website. The URL's there. We'll also include it in our handout. That's where you can click through the different features. Obviously, there's a lot more can learn about it.

If you are interested in InfoWater Pro, one best location is our technical hub. This is a site where we provide really a landing page for a lot of content where you can learn, such as-- we have links to our one water blog where we feature different case studies and articles. We have webinars, free training. You can learn about really any of the modules on demand and much, much more.

And so with that, I want to thank you all. We are the presenters. These are our emails. In case you had any other questions and you wanted to reach out to learn more, we'd be happy to chat more with you. And so once again, thank you.