Using the Epanet Toolkit v2.00.12 with different programming environment

Abstract

Water utilities are betting heavily on the use of computer applications such as Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), along with other computing tools and specialized software for modeling water supply systems in both freeware or licensed software forms. Many of the computer applications associated with the use of models need to have a hydraulic simulator that will provide a network response to any given scenario according to the defined hydraulic and water-quality variables. Epanet, on top of covering this need as an independent application that has its own graphical interface for constructing a network model and analyzing its results, permits the connection of its Toolkit to any other graphical interface, thus opening a broad field of possibilities for any technician or researcher that wants to go beyond what the application currently offers. The Epanet Toolkit can be integrated into any native programming environment or licensed software programs such Excel, AutoCad, ArcGIS, etc. or their freeware versions such as OpenOffice, gvSIG, QSIG etc. As a matter of fact, this is what some commercial programs developed by companies or universities have done with the aim of designing and analyzing water distribution networks. The Epanet toolkit library has many functions that help us to retrieve and modify certain parameters of a network model before and after carrying out a hydraulic simulation. This permits us step-by-step control of its simulation process. Little information exists in the technical literature, however, concerning the how to use of all these functions. More information is needed on how to use the Toolkit in the most common programming environments and how to resolve the most frequent problems.