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As cities prepare for a changing future, transformative trends such as resource scarcity, digital proliferation, security and climate change require fresh perspectives and new ideas – and water, which underpins some of the biggest opportunity and challenges in our time – is a top consideration in communities near and far.
The World Economic Forum listed water crises as one of the top ten global risks both in terms of likelihood and impact for 2019 and beyond – and those in control of treating and delivering water services are challenged to plan how their complex systems will operate and affect each other in the future. It’s no simple task – these plans need to consider how the systems can be built economically and operated to work together sustainably, even in the face of uncertainty.
But what if we showed you how Replica™, Jacobs’ digital twins solutions software, dynamically analyzes resource supply, demand, cost, risk and other factors throughout systems to help clients around the globe make resilient decisions for the future?
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$ 100 M
in saved costs identified using Replica Planner software for critical infrastructure assessment
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100 +
successful project applications around the globe
“Being able to quickly perform extended period simulations of large, interconnected systems and visualize the results allows diverse stakeholder groups to understand tradeoffs and make informed decisions. We can move forward with high confidence in our selected approaches.”
Introducing Replica Planner™
As water issues intensify, so does awareness of the effects of water management decisions. Decisions at one point in the water cycle affect all the others – from water supplies to treatment, conveyance, wastewater treatment, reuse and return to the natural environment – and that’s how the Replica Planner™ tool, part of Jacobs’ suite of digital twins solutions software, makes a difference.
Replica Planner is scalable to different sizes and adaptable to different types of resource management challenges. Using the software, complex resource systems can be dynamically simulated to illustrate the changes of system components over time, especially in considering a range of possible future scenarios:
- Terrestrial water cycle components such as demand, supply, natural and manmade systems and hydrology.
- Energy cycle components such as demand, generation, transmission and storage.
- Waste cycle components such as generation, transportation, evaporation, sorting and processing.
- System economics such as capital cost (CAPEX), operational and maintenance cost (OPEX) and life cycle cost (LCC).
- Environmental criteria such as liquid, gas and solids releases and ecological impacts.
- Social criteria such as public health protection, traffic, cultural heritage, political imperatives and standard of living.
Informed decisions for new community developments…
India’s most ambitious infrastructure program, the Delhi - Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) – aims to develop eight new industrial regions as smart cities, including AURIC (the Aurangabad Industrial City) for which Jacobs is serving as program manager and the Manesar-Bawal Investment Region (MBIR) and Khushkhera Bhiwadi Neemrana Investment Region (KBNIR), for which we developed an integrated water resource management plan. DMIC’s vision is to create a strong economic base with state-of-the-art infrastructure to activate and support local commerce, enhance foreign investments, real-estate investments and attain sustainable development.
Located in the state of Haryana, MBIR and Rajasthan, KBNIR are the regions identified for first-priority development with expected completion by 2040. These are highly water-stressed areas, with competitive demands from various stakeholders for limited available water resources. DMIC engaged Jacobs to develop and implement a reliable, robust and resilient integrated water management plan – that’s practical, can be implemented within the project timeframe and produces optimal outcomes from economic, social, technical and environmental aspects.
We needed to create a dynamic simulation model that could analyze water supplies, demands, costs and risks in the system, and then use optimization techniques to define the best water management strategies that meet the goals of MBIR and KBNIR on a system-wide basis.
Our team proposed Replica Planner to conduct the modelling and water balance analyses to establish integrated water resources system behavior. Using the software, we provided several benefits, including:
- Focused planning that accounts for system complexity, arising from interaction between system components and time dependency.
- Demonstrated stewardship of water resources for end users and stakeholders to support long-term decisions.
- Enhanced understanding and processing of key information for stakeholders, with use of a high-level tool with a dynamic graphic interface to guide decision-making.
- Optimized cost/benefit outcome gained by obtaining and comparing benefit scores and estimated life-cycle costs for each option.
“To support development and functioning of world class industrial infrastructure at MBIR and KBNIR, reliability of water services and management through future was critical. Delhi - Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation – based on our global and varied experiences and local capabilities – selected us to develop an integrated water resource management plan that identified a diverse water portfolio to sustainably meet MBIR’s and KBNIR’s water demand through 2040. With Replica Planner, we developed a decision support model to operationalize water supply for the regions and select a preferred water source based on water requirement and resource availability.”
And for critical infrastructure assessments…
The Colorado River serves 30 million people and irrigates 3.5 million acres of cropland in the U.S. and Mexico – but climate variation and higher temperatures have put its long-term viability at risk. Between 2000 and 2014, the river lost nearly one-third of its flow and that number is expected to increase in the next 40 years, by up to another 20%.
The arid city of Tucson, Arizona, is one of the communities depending on the river for its water needs. Its Clearwater Renewable Resources Facility supplies a major portion of Tucson’s future water supply, allowing for a dramatic reduction in groundwater pumping throughout the region and particularly within the central part of the city. Each year, renewable water resources account for approximately 90% of Tucson’s potable water supplies and a majority of this water comes from the two recharge and recovery facilities located in Avra Valley. Once recovered, this water is sent to the Hayden-Udall facility for pH adjustment and disinfection. It is then pumped through a 96-inch-diameter pipeline. Given that a majority of Tucson’s renewable water supply passes through this transmission system, that had a history of failures, Tucson Water knew they needed to invest in plans to secure its water system reliability.
So, they planned to construct a redundant pipeline for an expected $200 million and commissioned Jacobs to develop a model to evaluate the supply system and perform a risk assessment of key infrastructure. We used a Replica Planner model to perform multi-variable analysis that evaluated water supply portfolios under a range of future scenarios – and then performed simulation runs for the proposed alternatives as they evolved over time.
Using Replica Planner, we provided water balance analysis for different zones and the entire water system; alternatives feasibility analysis including business as usual alternatives; risk assessment of key infrastructures (selected pipes); and life cycle cost evaluation for each alternative to combine capital and operating costs performance for comparative review of alternatives. Through the dynamic modeling capabilities offered by the software, our analysis identified a recommended strategy that could defer and reduce the size of the redundant transmission line to save ratepayers over $100 million in costs over a 50-year period.
The Replica Planner model’s capabilities are not limited to water industry, we’ve also applied the software for capital improvement planning and detailed operations studies for agricultural, mining and industrial clients as well as irrigation districts, regional resource management organizations, municipalities and whole-city community developers.