A hydraulic model has been developed for the Pinellas County Drinking Water System, a
large and complex water transmission and distribution network including six pumping
stations, 11 storage tanks, approximately 2,000 miles of piping, and thousands of valves.
The piping network was created from GIS-based shapefiles of the system and corrected
using record drawings. The elevations were assigned to the network nodes using 1-foot
contours of a County-wide Airborne Laser Swath Mapping. The Hazen-Williams
coefficients were assigned based on known pipe materials and diameters with
adjustments for age and expected flow velocity. Monthly retail meter records, real-time
wholesale meter records, and unaccounted-for water flows were allocated to the nodes
using the conventional bottom-up approach. Boundary conditions were incorporated into
the model. Anomalies were identified and corrected. The model was calibrated using the
testing data for the maximum hour demand. The simulation results were compared with
the testing results for six other demand events. The model was in close agreement with
the physical system in all simulation scenarios. The authors have successfully used the
model in the design of a 110-MGD water blending facility. Includes 7 references, tables, figures.