Data Analytics into Hydraulic Modelling for Better Understanding of Well/Surface Network Limits, Proactively Identify Challenges and, Provide Solutions for Improved System Performance in the Greater Burgan Field

A network modeling campaign for 15 surface gathering centers involving more than 1800 completion strings has helped to lay out different risks on the existing surface pipeline network facility and improved the screening of different business and action plans for the South East Kuwait (SEK) asset of Kuwait Oil Company. Well and network hydraulic models were created and calibrated to support engineers from field development, planning, and operations teams in evaluating the hydraulics of the production system for the identification of flow assurance problems and system optimization opportunities. Steady-state hydraulic models allowed the analysis of the integrated wells and surface network under multiple operational scenarios, providing an important input to improve the planning and decision-making process. The focus of this study was not only in obtaining an accurate representation of the physical dimension of well and surface network elements, but also in creating a tool that includes standard analytical workflows able to evaluate wells and surface network behavior, thus useful to provide insightful predictive capability and answering the business needs on maintaining oil production and controlling unwanted fluids such as water and gas. For this reason, the model needs to be flexible enough in covering different network operating conditions. With the hydraulic models, the evaluation and diagnosis of the asset for operational problems at well and network level will be faster and more effective, providing reliable solutions in the short- and long-terms. The hydraulic models enable engineers to investigate multiple scenarios to identify constraints and improve the operations performance and the planning process in SEK, with a focus on optimal operational parameters to establish effective wells drawdown, evaluation of artificial lifting requirements, optimal well segregation on gathering centers headers, identification of flow assurance problems and supporting production forecasts to ensure effective production management.

Raspy-Cal: A Genetic Algorithm-Based Automatic Calibration Tool for HEC-RAS Hydraulic Models

While automatic calibration programs exist for many hydraulic models, no user-friendly and broadly reusable automatic calibration system currently exists for steady-state HEC-RAS models. This study highlights development of Raspy-Cal, an automatic HEC-RAS calibration program based on a genetic algorithm and implemented in Python. It includes a graphical user interface and an interactive command-line interface, as well as libraries readily usable by other programs. As a case study, Raspy-Cal was used to calibrate a model of the Los Angeles River in California and its two major tributaries. We found that Raspy-Cal matched the accuracy of manual calibrations in much less time and without manual intervention, producing a Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency of 0.89 or greater within several hours when run for 100 iterations. Our analysis showed that the open-source freeware facilitates fast and precise calibration of HEC-RAS models and could serve as a basis for future software development. Raspy-Cal is available online in source and executable form as well as through the Python Package Index.

GFPLAIN and Multi-Source Data Assimilation Modeling: Conceptualization of a Flood Forecasting Framework Supported by Hydrogeomorphic Floodplain Rapid Mapping

Hydrologic/hydraulic models for flood risk assessment, forecasting and hindcasting have been greatly supported by the rising availability of increasingly accurate and high-resolution Earth Observation (EO) data. EO-based topographic and hydrologic open geo data are, nowadays, available on large scales. Data Assimilation (DA) models allow Early Warning Systems (EWS) to produce accurate and timely flood predictions. DA-based EWS generally use river flow real-time observations and 1D hydraulic models to identify potential inundation hot spots. Detailed high-resolution 2D hydraulic modeling is usually not used in EWS for the computational burden and the numerical complexity of injecting multiple spatially distributed sources of flow observations. In recent times, DEM-based hydrogeomorphic models demonstrated their ability in characterizing river basin hydrologic forcing and floodplain domains providing data-parsimonious opportunities for data-scarce regions. This work investigates the use of hydrogeomorphic floodplain terrain processing for optimizing the ability of DA-based EWSs in using diverse distributed flow observations. A flood forecasting framework with novel applications of hydrogeomorphic floodplain processing is conceptualized for empowering flood EWSs in preliminarily identifying the computational domain for hydraulic modeling, rapid flood detection using satellite images, and filtering geotagged crowdsourced data for flood monitoring. The proposed flood forecasting framework supports the development of an integrated geomorphic-hydrologic/hydraulic modeling chain for a DA that values multiple sources of observation. This work investigates the value of floodplain hydrogeomorphic models to tackle the major challenges of DA for EWS with specific regard to the computational efficiency issues and the lack of data in ungauged river basins towards an improved flood forecasting able to use advanced hydrodynamic modeling and to inject all available sources of observations including flood phenomena captures by citizens.

Sustainable Water Supply Systems Management for Energy Efficiency: A Case Study

A prerequisite for achieving high energy efficiency of water supply systems (understood as using less energy to perform the same task) is the appropriate selection of all elements and their rational use. Energy consumption in water supply systems (WSS) is closely connected with water demand. Especially in the case of oversized water supply systems for which consumers’ water demand is at least 50% less than previously planned and flow velocity in some parts of the system is below 0.01 m·s−1, this problem of excessive energy consumption can be observed. In the literature, it is difficult to find descriptions and methods of energy management for such a case. The purpose of this study was both an evaluation of the current demand of an oversized WSS and a preliminary technical analysis of the possibility for energy saving. Solutions are presented that resulted in improvements in energy management, thus increasing energy efficiency. The conducted analyses indicate the wide use of numerical, hydraulic models, among others, for the needs of the sustainable oversize water supply systems management in order to improve energy efficiency. Those simulations only give energy consumption results as a first step in the process of decision-making for the modernization process, in which investment costs should be taken into account as a second step. Thus, this paper emphasizes the crucial role of hydraulic models as a good analytical tool used in decision support systems (DSS), especially for large, oversized water supply systems.

A Conflict between Traditional Flood Measures and Maintaining River Ecosystems? A Case Study Based upon the River Lærdal, Norway

Floods are among the most damaging of natural disasters, and flood events are expected to increase in magnitude and frequency with the effects of climate change and changes in land use. As a consequence, much focus has been placed on the engineering of structural flood mitigation measures in rivers. Traditional flood protection measures, such as levees and dredging of the river channel, threaten floodplains and river ecosystems, but during the last decade, sustainable reconciliation of freshwater ecosystems has increased. However, we still find many areas where these traditional measures are proposed, and it is challenging to find tools for evaluation of different measures and quantification of the possible impacts. In this paper, we focus on the river Lærdal in Norway to (i) present the dilemma between traditional flood measures and maintaining river ecosystems and (ii) quantify the efficiency and impact of different solutions based on 2D hydraulic models, remote sensing data, economics, and landscape metrics. Our results show that flood measures may be in serious conflict with environmental protection and legislation to preserve biodiversity and key nature types.

Computational Modeling of the Hydrological Processes in Caatinga and Pasture Areas in the Brazilian Semi-Arid

The semi-arid regions of northeastern Brazil have historically suffered from water shortage. In this context, monitoring and modeling the soil moisture’s dynamics with hydrological models in natural (Caatinga) and degraded (Pasture) regions is of fundamental importance to understand the dynamics of hydrological processes. Therefore, this work aims to evaluate the hydraulic parameters in Caatinga and Pasture areas using the Hydrus-1D inverse method. Thus, five soil hydraulic models present in Hydrus-1D were used, allowing the comparison of the single-porosity model with more complex models, which consider the dual porosity and the hysteresis of the porous medium. The hydraulic models showed better adjustments in the Caatinga area (RMSE = 0.01–0.02, R2 = 0.61–0.97) than in the Pasture area (RMSE = 0.01–0.03, R2 = 0.61–0.90). Regarding the hydraulic parameters, for all models, the Pasture showed smaller saturated hydraulic conductivity and water content values of the mobile region than the Caatinga. This fact demonstrates the negative impact of compaction and change in natural vegetation in the Brazilian semi-arid. The dual-porosity model presented the best fit to the data measured in the Pasture area. However, a single-porosity model could be considered representative of the Caatinga area. The results showed that Caatinga areas contribute to maintaining soil moisture and increasing the water storage in semi-arid regions.

Calibration of Design Models for Leakage Management of Water Distribution Networks

Water losses in urban water distribution networks (WDN) accelerate the deterioration of such infrastructures. The enhanced hydraulic modelling provides a phenomenological representation of WDN hydraulics, including the modelling of leakages as function of pipe average pressure and deterioration. The methodological use of such models on real WDN was demonstrated to support the planning of leakage management actions. Nonetheless, many water utilities are still in the process of designing flow/pressure monitoring, thus data available are not enough to perform detailed calibration of such models.This work presents a physically based approach for the calibration of WDN hydraulic models aimed at supporting leakage management plans since early stages. The proposed procedure leverages the key role of mass balance in enhanced hydraulic models and the technical insight on pipe deterioration mechanisms for various quantity and quality of available data. Two calibration studies of real WDNs demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and show that the distribution of leakages in the WDN does not much influence the pressure values, which confirms the need for flow measurements at monitoring districts for leakage and asset management.