AOWIS:Roadmap
AOWIS has progressed beyond its initial conceptual phase. A substantial software foundation for modelling, simulating, visualizing, and eventually operating water infrastructure is under active development.
The long-term objective is a complete open-source SCADA, infrastructure modelling, simulation, and operational management platform for water and agricultural infrastructure. Planning, simulation, live monitoring, control, maintenance, and historical data should ultimately operate on the same shared infrastructure model.
EPANET currently provides the primary hydraulic and water-quality simulation engine, but AOWIS is not designed solely as an EPANET frontend. EPANET is one solver integrated into a broader, solver-independent AOWIS architecture.
Current Software State
The current AOWIS software stack already includes several major components.
Shared Infrastructure Model
The AOWIS server model provides a common representation of water infrastructure independently of a particular simulator, user interface, or field controller.
Pumps, pipes, junctions, reservoirs, tanks, valves, controls, measurements, and related infrastructure can therefore be represented consistently throughout the system.
Hydraulic and Water-Quality Simulation
A dedicated EPANET integration layer translates between the AOWIS model and EPANET and executes hydraulic and water-quality simulations.
The integration supports network import and export, hydraulic behaviour, controls and rules, pumps and valves, water-quality analysis, diagnostics, simulation reports, and other EPANET functionality.
Integration of EPANET-MSX is being developed to extend this to advanced multi-species water-quality and chemical reaction modelling.
Network Editor and Monitoring Interface
The AOWIS graphical application provides tools for creating, importing, inspecting, simulating, and visualizing water networks.
This includes:
- geographic map views
- terrain-aware 3D visualization
- network monitoring views
- simulation configuration
- analysis of simulation results
Geographic and Terrain Infrastructure
AOWIS includes mapping and terrain services for:
- geographic placement
- elevation data
- basemaps
- terrain visualization
- local caching
This allows hydraulic infrastructure to be evaluated together with the real terrain on which it is or may be constructed.
Local and Standalone Operation
AOWIS is being designed so that deployments do not depend on continuous Internet or cloud connectivity.
Server, map, simulation, and user-interface components can be combined for local deployments, supporting the offline-first requirements of the project.
GitHub: AOWIS-SERVER-Standalone
The software remains under active development and should not yet be considered a complete production SCADA system.
Towards a Full SCADA System
The next major development stage is to connect the existing infrastructure model and simulation environment to real infrastructure in continuous operation.
The same network that is used for planning and hydraulic simulation should eventually represent the live system:
- sensor measurements update the state of modelled infrastructure
- pumps, valves, tanks, reservoirs, wells, treatment systems, and electrical systems can be monitored in real time
- historical measurements and operational events are recorded
- operators can inspect current and historical system behaviour
- alarms and abnormal conditions are detected and presented clearly
- hydraulic and water-quality models can be compared with observed conditions
- authorized control commands can be issued to field equipment
- automation can operate within explicitly defined safety limits
- local systems continue operating safely when communication with higher-level systems is unavailable
Telemetry and Field Communication
Initial AOWIS deployments are intended to use technologies such as:
- LoRa/LoRaWAN for low-bandwidth long-range field communication
- MQTT for telemetry and message transport
The architecture should remain open to additional field and industrial protocols as required.
Future work includes:
- standardized representation of sensors, actuators, controllers, and communication endpoints
- ingestion of continuous and event-based telemetry
- manual measurements alongside automated measurements
- reliable timestamping and measurement quality information
- buffering during communication outages
- synchronization after connectivity is restored
- device health and communication-state monitoring
Monitoring, Alarms, and Historian
AOWIS is intended to develop from its current simulation and visualization capabilities into a complete operational monitoring environment.
Planned capabilities include:
- live network status
- time-series storage and visualization
- alarm and event management
- configurable alarm thresholds and priorities
- acknowledgement and audit trails
- equipment status and fault reporting
- operational dashboards
- maintenance information
- comparison of measured and simulated behaviour
- long-term analysis of water demand, pressure, flow, quality, energy use, and equipment performance
Control and Automation
AOWIS ultimately aims to support both manual and automatic control of infrastructure, including:
- pumps
- valves and actuators
- storage tanks and water towers
- wells and boreholes
- treatment systems
- irrigation systems
- electrical and solar-energy infrastructure
Automation must follow the core AOWIS principles of human-in-the-loop control, safe fallback behaviour, local autonomy, and operation under degraded conditions.
Safety-critical protection should not depend solely on central software or network connectivity. Where appropriate, fundamental protections should remain implemented locally using simple and independently functioning electrical, mechanical, or controller-based systems.
Model-Assisted Operation
A major objective is to combine traditional SCADA functionality with the hydraulic and infrastructure model already present in AOWIS.
The live system may eventually use simulation and modelling to support:
- expected-versus-measured pressure and flow comparison
- leak and abnormal-consumption detection
- detection of sensor or equipment faults
- estimation of conditions at locations without sensors
- tank and reservoir management
- pump scheduling
- energy optimization
- water-quality tracking
- evaluation of proposed operator actions before execution
- demand forecasting
- planning of network expansion and infrastructure changes
This creates a path from a conventional SCADA display toward a continuously updated operational model of the physical water system.
Solver-Independent Development
Although EPANET is currently the primary hydraulic solver, hydraulic calculations and solver-specific assumptions should remain isolated from the common AOWIS infrastructure model.
This allows AOWIS to integrate additional simulators, optimization systems, agricultural models, or specialized engineering tools in the future without requiring the physical infrastructure model to be redesigned around a particular solver.
Infrastructure and Water Treatment
Development is also expanding beyond distribution networks themselves.
AOWIS should be capable of representing and supporting the planning and operation of complete water systems, including:
- wells and boreholes
- pumping stations
- reservoirs and water towers
- distribution networks
- drinking-water treatment
- desalination
- disinfection
- irrigation
- electrical and solar-energy systems
See Infrastructure for documentation of physical infrastructure technologies and Reference for concrete engineering designs and example implementations.
Hardware
Hardware development and research will continue alongside the software platform.
Priorities include:
- robust water-level, pressure, flow, and water-quality sensing
- monitoring of solar and battery systems
- locally serviceable field controllers
- pump and valve interfaces
- electrical protection
- emergency shutdown systems
- equipment suitable for heat, dust, unreliable power, and difficult logistics
- designs that can be repaired using locally available skills and components where practical
AOWIS does not require all hardware to be developed specifically for the project. Existing equipment should be integrated wherever it can satisfy the required interfaces, reliability, safety, and maintainability requirements.
Long-Term Direction
The intended result is an integrated platform covering the complete lifecycle of water infrastructure:
survey and planning → engineering and simulation → construction → commissioning → monitoring → control → maintenance → analysis → expansion
The same open infrastructure model should connect these stages instead of requiring separate, incompatible systems for engineering, SCADA, maintenance, mapping, and simulation.
AOWIS aims to make capabilities that are traditionally distributed across expensive and proprietary engineering, GIS, SCADA, telemetry, and asset-management products available through an open and interoperable platform suitable for both small local installations and larger water systems.