Control of sewer overflows is vital to reducing risks to public health and protecting the environment from water pollution. Sewer overflows are a leading cause of water pollution in the nation's lakes, streams and inland bays. The untreated sewage from these overflows contains microbial pathogens, suspended solids, toxics, nutrients, trash, and other pollutants that deplete dissolved oxygen and can contaminate our waters, causing serious water quality problems and threatening drinking water supplies, fish and shellfish. This sewage can also back up into basements, causing property damage and creating threats to public health for those who come in contact with the untreated sewage.

With the growing expectations by the public for quality services, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the authority of the Clean Water Act adopted by Congress has implemented pollution control programs and set wastewater standards for the industry. In order to meet these requirements, comprehensive modeling and analysis of these sewer systems becomes necessary for developing and evaluating sound cost-effective solutions for enhancing system integrity and performance to reliably convey sewer flows without surcharging, overflows, flooding, and backups.

Today, many wastewater utilities utilize hydraulic network simulation models to plan improvements and design better systems. These improvements are normally achieved through increasing conduit capacity, storage volume, and pumping capacity. Current practice involves a tedious trial-and-evaluation procedure that seldom leads to the most effective or most economical solutions for upgrading collection systems. This requires using the hydraulic collection system simulation model to evaluate the hydraulic performance of the existing collection system with different design alternatives (modifications) under a range of loading conditions. The design that meets the target hydraulic criteria for the lowest cost is then selected from among the alternative designs. However, given the vast number of combinations of possible enhancements, it is unlikely that even the most experienced engineer will be able to determine the least-cost improvement alternative. This process is also not able to ensure that the final design could perform adequately under all possible loading conditions. The result of using the traditional trial-and-evaluation approach is often inefficient performance at greater cost.

InfoSWMM Designer offers a very sophisticated optimization capability representing a major step forward for collection system modeling. With this capability, you can rapidly formulate and assess various reliable and cost-effective improvement solutions, which previously required a tedious trial-and-error approach or were not practical to even attempt. InfoSWMM Designer leverages the power of advanced Genetic Algorithms optimization technology to automatically select the most cost-effective solution to flooding and pollution management, using a combination of pipe slope and size, storage, pumping and new piping to eliminate unwanted sewer overflows and achieve targeted system performance requirements. Performance criteria include maximum allowable depth to diameter ratio, minimum and maximum pipe velocities, and maximum head loss for force mains.

InfoSWMM Designer is the ultimate tool to help engineers produce the best possible design and improvement alternatives with minimum effort and maximum cost savings. Its capabilities will greatly assist wastewater utilities in planning and designing reliable systems and optimizing their capital improvement programs - leading to healthier communities, cleaner beaches, and fish and shellfish that are safer to eat.

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