In-Person GoldSim Training - September 13, 2023

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

I will be teaching a 1-day hands-on GoldSim training course at the upcoming Arizona Hydrological Society's Annual Symposium on September 13 in Flagstaff Arizona. Visit their conference website for more information: GoldSim Workshop – 2023 AHS Symposium. We hope to see you there!

GoldSim Workshop at AHS Symposium in Tucson

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

GoldSim Technology Group collaborated with the Arizona Hydrological Society last week to provide a 1-day software training workshop as part of their annual conference. The workshop was well attended by folks from various organizations and companies in the area. Following the workshop, I was able to meet new people and learn more about the current water resources issues in the Southwest.

Read about the symposium here.

Application of the Markov Process Rainfall Model

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

If you have visited our Model Library lately, you might have noticed that we have a nice little example model that demonstrates the use of a Markov process to simulate daily rainfall. You need to specify some key statistical inputs that have some basis on historic data. How do you develop these inputs? How do you know if the Markov model is realistic? I thought it would be helpful to show how this simple example might be applied in a real-world project and try to answer those questions.

*Note that I made changes to the results on 5/20/2016 after I used GoldSim's optimization function to better calibrate the rate variability.

Central Arizona Project - Service Area Model

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

GoldSim is being used by engineers and planners at Central Arizona Project to simulate water management in an area experiencing rapid growth coupled with uncertainties about future water supply, demand and reliability.

The Central Arizona Project Service Area Model (CAP:SAM) was developed by in-house staff using GoldSim software to simulate water demands for all major water using entities in the CAP three county Service Area, and the water supplies they use to meet their demands.  The model can be used to simulate a wide range of future conditions including variable rates and patterns of growth, shortage impacts, effluent reuse, aquifer recharge and recovery, and complex supply portfolio management decisions on an annual time step.

Powerful Decision Making for a Phosphate Mine

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

One of the winners of the 2015 User Conference poster session presented on a GoldSim application for a phosphate mine in central Florida. After reading more about this application, I began to better appreciate the great work that Cardno has been involved in. The phosphate mining industry faces very strict effluent limitations while having to manage several hundred gallons of water around the site every day. The model must account for a continuously changing landscape of flow paths and operating schemes under varying hydrologic conditions. Read about how GoldSim is being used to help the mining company make better decisions as they comply with these changing regulations.

Modeling Runoff from Multiple Catchments using a Vector Splitter

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

If you have some flow of material or a transaction and need to divide it up or allocate it, likely you will use the Allocator or Splitter element in GoldSim. While these elements are very powerful and make the job a lot easier, there is one condition for which it was not specifically built: handling an array of input amounts. To address this, we have added some nice examples to our library that allow you to simulate allocations and splits on arrays of data. These examples provide an easy way to build powerful models that might have otherwise been quite difficult to build and maintain. I tested the array splitter example model using a real-world example that simulates rainfall runoff in a new stormwater management system, and this is described in this post.

GoldSim Applications at the Mine Water Solutions Conference

Posted by Rick Kossik

I've just returned from the Mine Water Solutions in Extreme Environments Conference in Vancouver, BC.  This biennial conference focuses on a wide range of issues associated with mine water management, particularly in extremely wet, dry and cold climates, and with extreme hydrogeological and geochemical issues.  As many of you know, GoldSim is used extensively worldwide for such applications, and as a result, GoldSim was commonly mentioned during the conference.  For example, in one of the keynote sessions, Lisa Wade of GoldCorp (one of the world's largest gold producers), described the company's Water Stewardship Strategy, which it uses to ensure water security and production, reduce costs and impacts, improve operations, and address stakeholder concerns.  During the talk, Lisa mentioned that as part of the Strategy, water management models at the various mine sites are all carried out using GoldSim.  In addition, during the conference a number of technical papers featuring GoldSim were presented. Two such applications are briefly summarized in this post.

American Water Resources Association 2015 Conference

Posted by Jason Lillywhite

I recently traveled to sunny Los Angeles, California for the AWRA 2015 Specialty Conference: "Water for Urban Areas: Managing Risks and Building Resiliency." All of the presentations I listened to were very interesting, some of which used GoldSim as the tool to facilitate the studies and results presented. The highlight of the trip, of course, was to visit with some of our customers and make new friends. I also learned more about some of the unique challenges California is facing due to continued population growth, climate change, water quality conditions, and aging infrastructures.