Modeling Software Opens Door to New Era of Water Resources Management and Conflict Resolution

HydroLogics, Inc., an industry leader in water resource system modeling and computer-aided negotiation (CAN), has launched OASIS Lite, a low-cost version of its acclaimed OASIS water resources modeling software.

The new OASIS Lite software, which retails for $750, has all the features and power of the full OASIS product, but the size of water system it can model is limited to 20 nodes. A free trial version, which expires in 45 days, can be downloaded from the company's web site, www.hydrologics.net, or obtained by contacting the company's Sacramento office. Students and teachers are eligible for a free license to use OASIS Lite for educational purposes.

OASIS Lite is based on HydroLogics' flagship software product, OASIS, the state of the art in modeling software for water resources systems analysis. Its patented Operations Control Language (OCL™) allows the communication of any conceivable operating policy or objective to the software and represents a major step forward in the art of water resources modeling.

"OASIS Lite's ease of operation, along with its low price, empowers managers of small water systems to model their water resources with the same degree of sophistication and accuracy that users of the full version of OASIS have," said Dr. Daniel Sheer, president of HydroLogics.

HydroLogics, in developing and using OASIS in some of the largest water systems in the world, has demonstrated that computer modeling of water systems provides numerous benefits to water resources managers and ultimately the public, including

• The ability to do timely and accurate long-term capacity planning,

• The ability to develop realistic contingency plans for a wide range of scenarios,

• Improved speed and effectiveness of response to disasters and other unpanned events, as operators can determine and evaluate options quickly,

• The ability to document operating policies and operating criteria,

• Improved training for new operators, who can obtain a better understanding of their water system and how it reacts from several days of simulation than they would from 5 to 10 years of operating experience, and

• An accurate and complete basis for computer-aided negotiation to resolve conflicts in the allocation of water resources.

Using OASIS to model a system provides a way of looking at different operations scenarios in a quick fashion--one can look at several weeks or several years in a short time. A multitude of variables can be examined and accepted or rejected relatively quickly to arrive at a set of non-inferior solutions. "If anyone has a water supply system or hydropower generation system and does not have a model of that system, they are operating at a great disadvantage--no matter how well they may know their system," explained Harold Meyer, vice president.

"This is all about enabling water people to solve water problems," Meyer added. "We have found that most conflicts over water occur when the opposing parties all have untrue perceptions about what can or cannot be done. We've developed the tools and the process to reduce that factor, because our experience shows that more can be done than most people realize. We have released OASIS Lite so that others can get similar results to ours."

Source: HydroLogics, Inc.