International User Conference Wallingford

The first two days of the conference featured three parallel streams covering Urban Drainage and Stormwater (InfoWorks CS), Water Distribution (InfoWorks WS), and River Systems and Flood Forecasting (InfoWorks RS with FloodWorks). The final day was devoted to Water Asset Data Management (InfoNet).

Over the three days, high quality speakers from Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia presented almost 30 case studies on the application of Wallingford Software solutions to address a diverse array of challenging water management scenarios. These included urban flood forecasting in Malaysia, modeling the Tabasco floods in Mexico, Sydney Water's new water supply modeling system, demand management undertaken by Hangzhou Water in China, the combined application of InfoWorks and InfoNet in Utrecht in the Netherlands and the implementation of InfoWorks RS2D in France. Complementing the case study program, speakers from Wallingford Software provided users with details of the forthcoming new version releases of InfoWorks and InfoNet and even headlined some of the innovations planned for InfoWorks v10 in 2009.

Paul Banfield, Wallingford Software's Sales and Marketing Director, recognises that the International User Conference acts as a barometer of the worldwide industry, revealing the current priorities of modelers and water asset managers:

"Few events in the global water industry attract such a diverse group of contributors and attendees. This means that the common themes that emerge reveal the interests and concerns of modelers and asset managers worldwide. This year two themes seemed particularly prevalent. The first is the enormous demand for applying 2D modeling in the urban environment in order to help local communities plan more effectively for the impact of extreme rain events. The second relates to the integration of Wallingford Software solutions with each other - InfoWorks and InfoNet for instance - but also with third party applications, whether these are corporate business information systems like SAP or third party hardware devices such as tablet PCs or PDAs. The quality of user feedback makes all our user conferences a vital resource for informing our own development plans for our products."

For users, the International User Conference provides an unrivalled opportunity to learn from one another. Claudio Meoli from the Italian utility group Hera SpA, found the conference presentations fascinating:

"Water distribution modeling in Italy is not as advanced as in some other countries. So some presentations, like that from Sydney Water, provides us with a vision of what can be done, even if we are some way off from achieving that level of integration and automation. On the other hand Erik Amting from Vitens in his paper on ‘Asset Condition Estimation and Depreciation' gave me some practical ideas I can take home and put into practice straight away."

Others also used the event as a source of practical new ideas. Donna Walker, a modeler at Thames Water commented that the event was very helpful. "It's useful to see 2D modeling as we can take that back to Thames". Another attendee praised the event for being extremely informative, adding that it facilitated serious discussions between users and suppliers.

Not all the attendees were experienced with Wallingford Software solutions. Tom Mountz from Espey Consultants in the USA commented: "It's new software to me; I am trying to take in how it is different and better so I can translate that to clients. There are a couple of projects where it would be advantageous to use this. It is very interesting to see how it is used round the world and how similar the situations are around the world - we are in a flash flood area like Malaysia and dams and levees are a big issue".

Mark Kaney, a modeler with United Utilities in the UK believes that "the topics presented reflect the hot topics of the industry". Siriperi Saryprasit, a modeler with Royal Haskoning reflected: "the new version of InfoWorks RS 9.5 with new features and functionalities will be a great help to modelers". Vicki Harty from Hartfair liked the diversity of people at the event and reflected on the importance of this for the industry: "The move in future is to integrate rivers and sewers so it's good to get lots of people from these separate strands together".

This year's event took place at the Crowne Plaza hotel in the centre of Reading and was universally praised for the quality of its environment and the difference this made for both contributors and attendees.

As in previous years all the case studies will be appearing on the Wallingford Software web site in due course.

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