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    Pressure management

    Use case

    Effective pressure management is essential for ensuring reliable water distribution, reduce leaks and prevent bursts. With Qatium, you can analyze and optimize network pressures manually or take advantage of the Pressure management plugin for a more automated and intuitive approach.

    This plugin, available in the Qatium Marketplace, allows you to identify:

    • Sections of your network where pressure is regulated by a PRV
    • Key pressure locations like the minimum or maximum customer pressure points
    • PRV-managed zones with potential pressure issues

    Data requirements

    Depending on the data you have available for your network, you will be able to test different scenarios and/or get better insights. Double-check below if your network meets the data requirements to manage pressures with Qatium. 

    The more information you have available, the better!

    Minimum data requirements 

    With this data, you can manage your pressures in Qatium:

    • Basic assets (supply source, pipes, tanks, pumps, control valves and shutoff valves)
     
     

    Essential for deeper insights

    Additionally to the minimum requirements, and as a best practice for deeper insights, we recommend your network to have the following data:

    • Zones
      To have more detailed insights about the zones and their boundaries.
    • Customer points
      To optimize operations and check the customer impact with minimum and maximum pressures.
    • SCADA, Pressures and Flow sensors
      To ensure your model is updated with latest network readings
    • AMI
      For NRW (non-revenue water) quantification within each DMA
     
     

    Tools

    To manage pressures in your network with Qatium you can use the following tools:

    • Overview work mode (if your network has limited zones)
    • Pressure management plugin
    • Pressures panel (optional), to visualize the distribution of pressures across the network.
    • Zones panel, if you are managing pressures the manual way.

    How to manage pressures in Qatium

    You can manage network pressures manually or you can use the Pressure management plugin for a more automated and intuitive approach.

    Managing pressures manually

    Step-by-step guide

    Change pressure zone boundaries

    1. Activate Overview in the Work modes work-modes-panel-button.png panel
    2. Go to the zone with the extreme pressure and click on it
    ZONE BOUNDARIES.gif

    The Zones zones-panel-button.pngpanel will show you information about the pressures in that zone, the boundary valves, and the inlets and outlets. From there:

    1. Go to the closest boundary valves on the list and click on the marker locate-asset-button.png to locate it on the map
    2. Click on the valve to open it switching the toggle ON toggle-on-button.png
    3. Create another boundary valve, by selecting another valve inside the zone with extreme pressure and switching the toggle OFF toggle-off-button.png

    Continue repeating step 3 until a new clear boundary is established between the two pressure areas.

    ZONE BOUNDARIES_2.gif
     
     

    Change PRV settings

    1. Select a pressure regulating valve (PRV) prv-open-icon.png
    2. Select the time on the timeline you want to apply a new setting
    3. Enter the new value
    4. Press Enter

    PRV.gif

     
     
     
     

    Insights & results

    The Zones panelzones-panel-button.pngwill show you information about the pressures in that zone. You can also click the zone on the map to see the details.

    Activate the Pressures panel to visualize how pressures are distributed in the network, and how the changes affect them.

    You can check the pressure differences between your base network and the scenario using the Network Versions network-versions-panel-button.png panel.

    ⚠️ Important: Any change applies from the current time step until the end of the day, and when navigating forward or backward in time. Any pre-existing controls in the model will prevail over manual changes.

     
     
     

    Using the Pressure management plugin 

    Step-by-step guide

    1. Activate the Pressure management plugin
    2. Select the time on the timeline you want to apply a new setting
    1. Click on the marker locate-asset-button.png to locate the zone on the map
    1. Click on the settings button to adjust the PRV
    1. Enter the new value and press Enter
     
     

    Insights & results

    The Pressure management plugin will show:

    1. A list of the network pressure zones: hover over each to highlight its geometry on the map.
    2. Key pressures on each zone, including:
      1. Minimum and maximum customer pressure
      2. Minimum and maximum area pressure

    You can hover over each to highlight the customer points on the map, and use the marker locate-asset-button.png to quickly locate them.

    If there's any risk of customers with low pressures (under 20 m) before or after you changed the settings of the PRVs, we'll display a warning.

    You can also combine the Pressure management plugin with the Pressures panel for a more visual representation of pressures across the network.

    Switch betweeen My network and My scenario using the Network versions network-versions-panel-button.pngpanel to check the pressure differences between your base network and the scenario.

     
     

    FAQs & Troubleshooting

    I can't access the pressures panel

    I can't access the pressure, flow and/or tank autonomy panels

    If you are running scenarios and you can’t access these panels, it’s most likely because something went wrong during the simulation. Qatium simulates the behavior of each network using the EPANET toolkit, which can raise some errors while it is calculating and/or finishing the simulation process without returning the results for all the hours shown in the timeline.

    In the hours when there are results, they will be shown on the map, in the asset details, and in the pressure, flow, and tank autonomy panels. But if for a selected time step there are no available results, these panels will be disabled and hidden.

    Remember that in the Synoptic view, only relevant panels will be available.
    E.g.: the Demand spike panel won’t be available as junctions are not visible from the Synoptic view.

     
     

    How are upstream and downstream pressures calculated?

    How are upstream and downstream pressures calculated?

    Upstream and downstream pressures are calculated during the simulation depending on the orientation of the surrounding network elements. Qatium uses the EPANET engine to solve physics equations about the movement of water in pressurized water networks