Office of Public Works Implements FloodWorks within Ireland’s Largest County for Critical Flood Forecasting

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Office of Public Works Implements FloodWorks within Ireland’s Largest County for Critical Flood Forecasting

Innovyze Smart Water Solution to Guard Against Flooding along the River Blackwater in Ireland

Broomfield, Colorado, USA, August 12, 2014 — Innovyze, a leading global innovator of business analytics software and technologies for smart wet infrastructure, today announced that Ireland’s Office of Public Works (OPW) has implemented FloodWorks as part of its flood control and mitigation systems for Cork County Councils Munster Blackwater Catchment. County Cork has a population of about 400,000 and covers an area of 7,459 square kilometres (2,880 square miles). Its coastline measures approximately 1,100 kilometres (680 miles). The county has the greatest number of rivers in Ireland, with 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) of main river channels. They are the source of over 30 million gallons (136 million litres) of drinking water per day. As the lead agency for flood risk management in Ireland, the OPW is responsible for developing and implementing comprehensive policies and strategies for flood risk management. Its aim is to minimize the impacts of flooding for areas at risk through sustainable planning, guidance, information and effective remedial measures. The Government has allocated €45 million per year for flood risk management and mitigation for the period of 2012–2016. At a time of severe financial constraints, this substantial funding underlines the Government’s recognition of the seriousness and economic impact of flooding. “We developed a robust and comprehensive flood forecasting system using FloodWorks for the River Blackwater in County Cork to help predict water levels at a number of key locations, with special focus on the towns of Mallow and Fermoy,” said Mark Hayes, Flood Relief Design Engineer of the Office of Public Works. “We’ve now extended the system to make this data, along with daily rainfall totals, available on the County Council website and on smartphones. FloodWorks Web is helping us meet our business objectives with maximum effectiveness.” FloodWorks is a modular software package providing real-time simulation and forecasting of future hydrological and hydraulic conditions within river basins, stormwater and drainage systems and coastal areas. Designed for operational use in the control room, it links varied live data sources with a wide range of models to provide detailed and accurate forecasts of water levels, flood depths, flows, velocities, water quality parameters and sea states. When configured for use with the integrated 1D/2D simulation engine in Innovyze InfoWorks RS,FloodWorks also provides flood forecasting for river systems, channels and flood plains. The comprehensive modeling solution combines integrated rainfall-runoff, hydraulic, water quality, conveyance, dam breach and logical control modules with real-time hydrological and meteorological time-series data to forecast water levels, flood depths and sea states for hours or days ahead. The product’s operational management user interface, FloodWorks Event Manager, combines ease of use with powerful capabilities for visualizing and reporting forecast results. When an event trigger threshold is reached, the FloodWorks Server issues an alert. This alert and its severity level are clearly shown on the map display in the FloodWorks Event Manager. Alerts can be simultaneously issued by e-mail or SMS to ensure that the latest information is distributed to key personnel as quickly as possible. “The economic and personal costs of flooding are only too real for many people in countries around the world,” said Paul F. Boulos, Ph.D., BCEEM, NAE, Hon.D.WRE, Dist.D.NE, F. ASCE, President, COO and Chief Technical Officer of Innovyze. “We are proud that OPW has chosen FloodWorks to play such an important part in its critical work to minimize the impacts of flooding on society, households and businesses.”