Introducing SWMM5+ beta
As a part of a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA or EPA)*, CIMM has developed a next-generation hydraulic solver for the EPA Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). The new code is known as SWMM5+ (or SWMM5plus). The public-domain beta release of this code takes a major step forward by using finite-volume algorithms for the hydraulic solution.
Based on input from practitioners, CIMM set our sights on a new hydraulic engine for EPA SWMM that is fast, accurate, and can take advantage of the multi-core processors that are on every engineer's desktop. These capabilities are vital for modeling complex and large hydraulic systems that are too slow to solve with the present EPA SWMM suite of solvers. The new public-domain code, SWMM5+, is not a replacement for the EPA SWMM code, but functions as an adjunct to the existing code.
Development of SWMM5+ has been a multi-year research and development effort of CIMM and its academic predecessor, NCIMM. The alpha version of SWWM5plus was previously released to our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for review and, after that review, CIMM is now releasing the beta version for public access via the GitHub link below.
Be warned that the SWMM5+ beta release at this time does not support all SWMM components and options. The code is undergoing continual development that is documented at the GitHub site. Furthermore, SWMM5+ is not distributed as an executable. The public domain beta code requires compiling on your own machine using the Intel oneAPI Fortran/C compiler, which can be done on a Linux workstation or using a Docker distribution provided at the GitHub site (below). The GitHub code is always the latest development code we are using, debugging, and extending to handle EPA SWMM hydraulic capabilities. People who might be interested in downloading and running SWMM5+ are engineers/programmers who want to look at the new data structures in the code and understand how the new finite volume solver works.
SWMM5plus beta can be accessed through GitHub here: https://github.com/CIMM-ORG/SWMM5plus
*This post and its content contains material developed under Cooperative Agreement No. 83595001 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to The University of Texas at Austin. It has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned on this website.