Affinity Water was looking at how it could meet increasing demand in the regional plan for South East England, led by WRSE. A number of feasible options were identified, of which a select few required new pipeline routing appraisals to be undertaken, which are usually done manually. This is time-consuming and may not consider whole life costs. Additionally routes may fail to meet strategic environmental assessments or habitat regulations, requiring later re-routing, increasing design work and potentially delaying programmes.

Moata Route Optimiser was used to create and appraise routes using a semi-automated process, adding significant value to the design process. A start /end point for the pipelines was specified by Affinity Water, as well as other key variables, such as flow, and then near-optimal pipeline routes were created. These were then appraised by technical experts and the best option selected.

Pipeline routes generated by Moata Route Optimiser consider various terrain types, elevation profiles and power requirements, and can be mapped on to client cost models. More than 80 layers of spatial and environmental constraints are used in the optimisation process from the outset and cost estimates for the optimisation variables are output immediately. This means alternative routes can be compared without time-consuming detailed costing.

Thousands of possible routes were determined by the AI in Moata Route Optimiser with the best options being presented. Engineers could then review and narrow-down these options using whole life cost parameters and environmental constraints also provided by the Route Optimiser. These capabilities proved invaluable at the optioneering stage and in decision making as they provided more certainty in early-stage routing and in the accuracy of transfer option costs.

Moata Route Optimiser is scheduled for application to multiple future routes and has proven highly beneficial for pipeline routing in developing clean water supply transfer options. It also has the potential to further develop routes in the future when detailed design is required, using complementary Moata solutions.