Water at Autodesk University: Day Two

Day Two at AU2022 started with three excellent talks on sustainability, concluding with Catherine Topley of Scottish Canals. It was an inspiring talk about the incredible transformation the canals of North Glasgow has undergone in the last decade.

And they did it with help from Innovyze software, draining the canal using sensors and weather data piped into the software to prepare for extreme weather events. This is also the subject of our latest case study, Engineering ‘Europe’s First Smart Canal’ with Autodesk software – as well as our new film.

Produced for Autodesk by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions, the film follows Scottish Canals Head of Engineering Peter Robinson as he paddleboards along the Glasgow canals, talking about the challenges their long-neglected canal routes faced and how they used smart technology and sustainable concepts to help rejuvenate the area. 

Standout sessions

In the session Big Innovyze for Small Town in Brazil, our own Ryan Brown hosted Fernando Schettini, Raírio dos Santos Mota, Newton Caxeta, and Matheus Lima de Barros to talk about a challenging dam case study. The rupture of the dam in Ayrton Senna Park in Brazil impaired one of the few tourist attractions in a small town in the Brazilian countryside, generating significant social and environmental impact.

Schettini Engenharia understood that for this atypical situation, it would be necessary to bring together some strategic partners to develop the entire building information modeling (BIM) solution with the help of geographic information system (GIS) solutions, starting the first smart-city project in the region by creating a workflow between ReCap software, Civil 3D software, Revit software, Autodesk Docs software, Navisworks software, Unity, InfoDrainage, and – of course – InfoWorks ICM.

Another session, InfoWorks ICM and Civil 3d: A Flood Modeler’s Guide to Project Impacts, hosted by Matt Anderson, tackled the increasingly popular round-trip interoperability workflow between InfoWorks ICM and Autodesk Civil 3d. This was a technical instruction class to help users through a number of considerations to preserve Civil 3D designs in evaluation of possible flood damages across the wide range of flood scenarios.

Info360 Plant debut

Michael Pennell, Patrick Bonk, Brian Deeley, and Nathan Gerdts walked attendees of Digital Twins with Info360 for Past, Present, and Future State of Networks through the concept of Digital Twin software – where it’s been, what’s possible now, and how AI, machine learning, SaaS, and the cloud have opened up huge possibilities for water and wastewater plants. And that future isn’t far off. We’re rolling it out now with the new Autodesk Info360 Plant software, which was announced at Autodesk University.

It was a great introduction to this new analytics software, with case studies of Water Corporation of Western Australia, who has a goal to reduce water loss to 10% by 2030. They’re using data-driven models to understand pressure and flow management with live physics-based models for pressure optimization. Another great example was North American utility’s water treatment plant. Their goal was to optimize chemical costs while maintaining compliance with predictive AI, and they’ve achieved a 13% savings (US$170,000) in ferric costs while meeting turbidity discharge compliance limits.

In the Expo hall

On Day Two, our team in the Expo welcomed both current customers and curious Autodesk software users who may not have been exposed to Innovyze water software before. After all, Innovyze is still new to many of the people who attend AU every year.

Also in the Expo, Alana Deghelli hosted our second water meet-up of AU, Flowing in New Directions, an informal gathering in the Meetup Lounge. If you’re at AU, we’d love to have you stop by and say hello today, which is the last day of the conference.

We also had fun exploring the Expo at AU, which is full of creative and innovative booths like this backdrop that recreates the classic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photo. We couldn’t resist donning some construction gear and sitting for a photo. Looking great Alana Deghelli and Billie Browne! Want to have your own photo taken like this? Look for the AEC Construction Cloud booth at AU.