What are the best practices and practical applications of Building Information Modeling (BIM) for water and wastewater? Do you work on transportation or land development projects? Do you work for a local government or a public utility that manages water systems? Join this Infrastructure Symposium session to discuss a better design for water systems. This is a breakout to the Infrastructure Symposium on Monday.

This case study will explore the first-ever commercial drone operations permitted within the rim of the Grand Canyon, and how the imagery captured was used to inform a critical water infrastructure project. Grand Canyon National Park, in Northern Arizona, is considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It encompasses an impressive 278 miles of the Colorado River and adjacent uplands and averages more than 10 miles wide. To support work to modernize the Grand Canyon Water System—which serves thousands of residents and millions of annual visitors—we used drones, surveying, and LiDAR technology to acquire high-resolution orthomosaic images and point clouds. In this digital transformation success story, we also employed Autodesk tools such as AutoCAD Civil, ReCap, Revit, and other Autodesk products.

Curious about the road ahead for Autodesk's product and service offerings for designing and maintaining water systems? Join Autodesk product and strategy managers to learn about new features and functionality supporting the capabilities and workflows you need to design and manage water systems and resources more effectively. Learn about the strategic insights and decisions driving development directions, and see early demonstrations of features and workflows yet to be released. Peer into the future of the products you use every day, and engage with Autodesk to help shape those products to better meet your needs and the needs of your company, project teams, and clients.

Hydraulic transients, commonly known as water hammer, pose a serious threat to water distribution systems, as they can often cause catastrophic pipe bursts. Simulating hydraulic transients remains a challenge due to the nonlinear governing equations, limited field data, and a host of operating conditions and requirements. We designed this session based on the adage that "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” The purpose is to emphasize the importance of the topic, introduce the fundamentals of water hammer simulation, and caution against common pitfalls that could lead to catastrophic failures of pipes and appurtenances in hydraulic systems. In the session, you will explore case studies that show how InfoWater Pro is used to protect piping infrastructure from potential harm by transients. You will also acquire a solid understanding of InfoWater Pro software's Surge functionality, which will help you analyze and mitigate transients within your own systems.

As the world grapples with the realities of climate change and rapid population growth, our traditional methods for managing stormwater have shown their limitations. The conventional focus on site-specific solutions, while essential, does not fully account for the complex, interconnected nature of urban water systems. This session will introduce a comprehensive, city-wide approach to stormwater modeling as a more adaptive and effective solution to these contemporary challenges.

Service disruptions are inevitable regardless of your water source, and they often result in chaos for operators, administrators, and residents. Even as communities move toward more proactive water system management, unanticipated disruptions will always occur. Utilities should be as prepared as possible to respond quickly and effectively. This presentation will explore the innovative ways the City of Livonia, located outside Detroit, is planning for and exploring potential water service disruption scenarios with hydraulic modeling through InfoWater Pro and ArcGIS Dashboards. With aging assets the city has experienced increasingly severe water system failures. Susan Knepper (OHM Advisors) will share the tools and practices she used to help the city plan for its water service disruptions, and she’ll cover the creative way she documented the city’s disruption protocols. Tim Medearis (Autodesk) will briefly share how Info360 can make this workflow even easier in the future.

Water is essential infrastructure—and designing, modeling, and managing it requires purpose-built tools. In this session, Autodesk product and strategy leaders will share what’s new and what’s next for our water-focused solutions, with a spotlight on how we’re supporting civil engineers and utilities in planning and maintaining water systems. From early-stage design to lifecycle management, get an inside look at how our roadmap is evolving to improve performance, collaboration, and resilience in water infrastructure projects. You'll also see early demos of in-development capabilities and have the opportunity to provide direct feedback to the team.

The needãand the abilityãto innovate is greater than ever. New ways of working are needed to create our evolving society. Every system you design, from the electrical grid that lights and heats our homes, to water system that supports life, to the railroads on which we travel, to the refineries that provide the gasoline for our carsãunderwrites a US$53 trillion demand for new or replacement infrastructure. Hear about the future of how infrastructure will be made, and the trends in technology that will radically transform the way you, as industry professionals, plan, design, deliver, and operate tomorrowês infrastructures by moving infrastructure delivery into a new era.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the operation and management of public water systems, improving efficiency, reliability, and sustainability. However, there is uncertainty about the value it can bring. By understanding these dimensions, participants will be better equipped to navigate the complex landscape of AI in water, fostering responsible and sustainable practices for the benefit of communities and the environment. We will discuss a multi-tier approach to using AI-enabled technology, such as that developed by Autodesk, to equip users to proceed with use of the technology. Each of the four tiers—cost-focused AI, performance-driven AI, human-centered AI, and socially responsible AI—has business goals and stakeholder values connected to it. For example, cost-focused AI results in efficiency gain or increased profits, whereas performance-driven AI would result in improved customer service or reliability, and socially responsible AI provides equitable infrastructure.

In this cross-industry collaboration between Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) and the Autodesk Technology Centre in Birmingham, England, we're solving the challenges NWG has maintaining water infrastructure. By employing advanced manufacturing techniques—such as laser scanning, reverse engineering, and hybrid manufacturing—NWG can work with its supply chain to repair broken parts and extend the operating lives of the assets they maintain. NWG is responsible for many assets that were manufactured decades ago, and the original design data is no longer available, causing excessively long lead times for replacement parts. As a result, the downtime for key national infrastructure water systems is prolonged and costly. We will show how this important collaboration between the water and manufacturing industries will reduce the downtime and extend product life, improving NWG's resilience, and ultimately saving money for customers.

In this class, we’ll show how to solve a critical situation that might cause a waste of money and time in the maintenance operation of underground utilities of 630 railway stations. Lack of data causes major issues. To retrieve the correct information about the underground, we’ve established, for each station, an innovative workflow that starts from an AutoCAD file containing an old design of the utilities, mainly water system and sewerage. The first step of this workflow is the topographic and geophysics surveys, followed by a post-processing data and 3D rendering of the underground. Inside Civil 3D software, the 3D model of the underground utilities can be used to optimize the design of the sewerage and water system, and link them to information and documentation useful for maintenance operation.

Every water distribution, storm sewer, and sanitary sewer system throughout the world is unique, but many of them are running into the same problems. Water quality, public safety, and fiscal responsibility are at the forefront of every utility manager's mind. Traditionally, models have been updated and calibrated during master planning projects that might happen every 3–10 years depending on the utility. Sadly, during these long stretches between calibration, the model results start to deviate from reality, and trust in the model falls significantly in the eyes of the organization. If this sounds like your utility, we want to talk with you about the difference a live model can make in your workflows. By sharing examples of customer live-modeling use cases all over the world, we hope to inspire utilities and their consultants to recognize changes they can make today to get closer to a realistic digital twin of their water system.

This case study will provide an overview on how Aurecon has utilized Building Information Modeling (BIM) to provide Queensland’s largest airport with a comprehensive analysis of the existing chilled water system within their domestic terminal. We will go through the steps undertaken from getting existing 2D as-installed documents and previously scanned models into Revit MEP software correctly for pipework analysis. Finally, we will go into detail on the process undertaken for getting all the engineering data correct and utilizing Autodesk, Inc.’s, latest product Project Dalton and its API to visually analyze the complex existing chilled water network through all of its various operating conditions.

Flushing large-diameter transmission water mains is a critical yet complex step in maintaining water quality. This session will highlight how InfoWater Pro was used to plan the flushing of more than six miles of 36-inch pipe by modeling hydraulic conditions, reversing flow direction, and optimizing valve and tank operations. You’ll learn about modeling guided decision making to increase flow rates for scouring while avoiding disruptions to customer service. Through a focused case study, this session will illustrate how to integrate hydraulic modeling and operational strategy to support effective large-main flushing.

During this session, you’ll learn about the various ways that extreme heat impacts water utilities, from decreased water supply and infrastructure challenges to worker safety concerns and increased costs of service delivery. We’ll explore the potential scale of these impacts and the varying ways that different locations are likely to be impacted. The presenters will then share several strategies for mitigating the impact of extreme heat, including optimized system modeling, predictive analytics, policy updates, and stakeholder outreach. By planning today for a future that is likely to be hotter than the past, we can create more-resilient communities that are ready to take on the heat.

This case study demonstrates the benefit of implementing a small 2D domain within an existing 1D InfoWorks ICM model to optimize the size and location of a planned storage facility and reduce overland flooding in a dense suburban neighborhood in the City of Toronto. Recent flooding imagery captured in 2018 and 2020 showed significant flooding in Woodborough Park and visible damage to facilities. The project team planned and designed drainage and storage mitigations by building a small-scale 2D surface model of the park and surrounding catchment area (39 hectares) within the larger 1D InfoWorks ICM model being used to plan and design the Fairbank Storm Trunk Sewer System Project. This approach enabled the designers to optimize the size of the storage facility and realize a 35% reduction in construction costs. We’ll present the approach used to develop the model, and there will be a discussion on what considerations should be given before adopting this approach to ensure the maximum benefit to the project.

In this live product demo, you’ll discover how to transform hydraulic modeling by eliminating the need for traditional ruby coding. We’ll showcase a powerful integration between Dynamo and the robust InfoWorks ICM and InfoWorks WS Pro platforms, where preconfigured drag-and-drop nodes replicate ruby methods. Throughout the session, participants will see how Automation, Integration, & Customization can dramatically reduce repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and boost accuracy in hydraulic modeling. You’ll learn practical techniques to create custom Automation, Integration, & Customization workflows that cut manual coding and shorten project timelines—all while maintaining design precision. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to these tools, this demo will offer valuable insights to optimize your design processes and improve overall project efficiency.