Mexico's third largest city selects Bentley for geospatial water management system

Bentley Systems Inc. has announced that SIAPA, the water and wastewater utility for Mexico's third largest city, Guadalajara, has selected WaterGEMS (from Bentley's Haestad Methods product line) to manage its water distribution system. SIAPA selected WaterGEMS after a thorough review of competing hydraulic modeling software products."Local presence, automatic calibration and design tools, and availability of a complete suite of complementary products for sewer, storm, and water hammer were key factors in our decision to choose Bentley," said Julio Agraz, chief distribution engineer for SIAPA.Before using WaterGEMS, managing SIAPA's water distribution system reportedly was time consuming and inefficient. With WaterGEMS's Scenario Management, SIAPA now understands and evaluates alternative water distribution management approaches to improve the operation of its system. WaterGEMS's Darwin Calibrator is being used extensively by SIAPA's engineers to shorten validation and simplify calibration tasks. The models will also be used to assist SIAPA in formulating and evaluating best management strategies for the network, which comprises 700 pressure zones.SIAPA's water distribution system serves more than 8.5 million people and consists of 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) of water mains in the Guadalajara metropolitan area, including the municipalities of Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, and Tonala. Some of the older pipes in the network have significant leakage problems, resulting in contaminated supplies and inefficient delivery of water.Highlights of this project consist of upgrading existing pipes, valves, and hydrants, and analyzing the effects of expanding the system with new developments. Once the models are complete, a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system will be implemented to monitor the network.Bentley is also providing professional services to SIAPA, including on-site software training in Mexico and assistance with setting up and developing the utility's initial models.