Incident Command Tool for Drinking Water Protection (ICWater)
ICWater is designed to model drinking water contamination in real-time for a rapid, effective emergency response.
Overview
The Incident Command Tool for Drinking Water Protection (ICWater) is a geographic information system (GIS)-based software tool for tracking and identifying the source of water contaminants. ICWater's hydraulic modeling engine is RiverSpill, which assesses the movement and dispersion of contaminants in streams and rivers in real time.
Application
ICWater is designed to assist incident commanders in modeling drinking water contamination in real-time for a rapid, effective emergency response. ICWater deals with human pathogens, toxic chemicals, and radioactive substances.
Stream and river flows used in ICWater are derived from web-accessible, real time gauging stations maintained throughout the country by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Example databases available within ICWater include dams, reservoirs, public drinking water intakes, stream gages, municipal and industrial dischargers, and transportation networks. A contaminant database, which identifies toxic biological, chemical, and radiological constituents, is also included.
Features
ICWater allows for both downstream and upstream network navigation. The tool makes use of the 1:100,000 scale National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus), a hydrologically connected river network that contains over 3 million reach segments in the U.S. Mean flow and velocity has been calculated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for each reach segment.
ICWater provides the time-dependent distribution of contaminant concentrations, simulated by modeled dispersion, dilution, and substance decay and reports contaminants arriving at drinking water intakes. Mean flows and velocities in the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) are scaled by the real-time flow and velocity from nearby gages.
Benefits
ICWater can create models of contaminating substances released instantaneously or continuously into U.S. surface waters. ICWater can use USGS real-time flow information, or alternative flow values provided by the user, to show the movement of substances downstream.
