1 © IWA Publishing 2020 Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology—AQUA | 69.

1 | 2020

EPANET in QGIS framework: the QEPANET plugin

Andrea Menapace, Giuseppe Roberto Pisaturo, Alberto De Luca,
Daniel Gerola and Maurizio Righetti

ABSTRACT

In the current era, the digitization of geographical data is a transverse need of several engineering Andrea Menapace (corresponding author)
Giuseppe Roberto Pisaturo
sectors, including the hydraulic networks management. Thus, water supply systems’ modelling Maurizio Righetti
Faculty of Science and Technology,
requires adequate tools in both the digitization and the simulation phases. This paper presents the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano,
Universitätsplatz 5, 39100 Bolzano,
QEPANET plugin, which aims at merging the flexibility of QGIS and the robustness of EPANET Italy
hydraulic simulations software. Several editing and graphical tools available with QEPANET are E-mail: anmenapace@unibz.it

introduced to model new and existing water distribution systems, to read and modify existing text- Alberto De Luca
Udine,
based EPANET files, to run simulations and visualize results in a geo-referenced framework. Piazza I Maggio 33, 33100 Udine,
Italy
In addition, an application is illustrated to underline the novelty and the practical functionality of the
presented tool, such as 3D pipe lengths’ automatic calculation and the supporting functionalities for Daniel Gerola
Department of Civil, Environmental and
the network drawing. The plugin is available via the official QGIS Python Plugins Repository and on Mechanical Engineering,
University of Trento,
the world-wide-web at https://gitlab.com/albertodeluca/qepanet. via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento,
Italy
Key words | EPANET, hydraulic modelling, open source tool, QEPANET, QGIS, water supply system

INTRODUCTION

The growing necessity to improve the current water supply
systems (WSSs) due to water demand rising together with
increasing drought event recurrences in a climate change
scenario has encouraged researchers and technicians to
face several issues such as designing new systems, refitting
deteriorated infrastructures and optimizing management.
Moreover, the emergence of smart technologies has dramati-
cally increased the amount of information available for
analysing WSSs, making it even more necessary to develop
suitable analysis tools. The most widely used tool to simulate
WSSs, for both scientific and technical purposes, is
EPANET version 2 (Rossman ), which is a C coding
language program developed by the United States Environ-
mental Protection Agency (US-EPA). Recently, the new
EPANET GUI, which has been developed in Python program-
ming language on the base of PyQt designer tool, presents
an interesting flexible interface including both original
and new capabilities (SWMM-EPANET UI a, b).
The new EPANET GUI allows additional functionalities to
be easily increased through the plugins frameworks (Sela
et al. ).
Based on EPANET software, several scientific algor-
ithms and practical tools have been developed, such as a
package that embeds EPANET solver in R environment
(Arandia & Eck ), a hydraulic solver improvement
(Muranho et al. ; Menapace et al. ) and bindings for
Matlab (Eliades et al. ) and Python (Pathirana ). In
addition, also commercial software applications are usually
compatible with the input-output EPANET standards.
US-EPA proposes four different products for WSSs
analysis at different levels. First, EPANET’s user interface
allows the WSS model to be drawn, to perform the simulation
and to visualize the results. Second, the programmer’s toolkit
(Rossman ), which is a programming interface based on
dynamic link library (DLL) technology, makes it possible to
perform multiple extended period simulations, to modify

doi: 10.2166/aqua.2019.087

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 2 A. Menapace et al. | EPANET in QGIS framework: the QEPANET plugin
parameters and to read results through the over 50 functions
available. Finally, EPANET-MSX and EPANET-RTX
increase the capabilities of EPANET with the ability to ana-
lyse multiple chemical reactions and perform real-time
hydraulic WSS simulations, respectively.
Thus, several efforts have been made concerning
EPANET portability and bindings, but there is still work to
be done to improve the modelling process with integrated
network-modelling frameworks. However, the main draw-
back of the current EPANET versions is the rare support
for the models’ drawing and for the definition of their
characteristics. Thanks to the EPANET architecture, it is
possible to add such capabilities through a computer-aided
design (CAD) application, e.g., WaterCAD (Agunwamba
et al. ). However, the important geographical nature
(or the spatial component) of WSSs combined with the cur-
rent increasing availability of digitized geo-referenced data
has increased the necessity to create links with geographical
information systems (GIS). In fact, the advantages of a geo-
referenced framework are considerable from many aspects,
ranging from the network modelling to the system manage-
ment. For example, a geo-referenced framework can allow
the modelling of a WSS directly on the base of GIS data pro-
vided by the utilities, allocation of hydraulic components
and water demand, arrange relational databases which are
the basis of management systems, and manage data
coming from sensors in the field.
QGIS (Quantum GIS ) is a leading free and open-
source GIS application capable of visualizing and analysing
geospatial data, whose functionalities can easily be extended
thanks to a robust plugin framework. For these reasons,
more than a thousand plugins are currently publicly avail-
able. Among these, there are also some EPANET-related
ones, such as the ‘Import/EpanetInpFiles’ plugin (Kyriakou
), which is suitable for moving files from EPANET to
QGIS and conversely, and the ‘GHydraulics’ plugin
(Macke ), which is an out-of-date tool able to calculate
economic diameters using the EPANET solver.
Therefore, the authors aim to close the gap of perform-
ing an entire modelling of hydraulic networks using
EPANET in a geo-referenced framework through the devel-
opment of a suitable tool, called QEPANET. QEPANET is
able to support researchers and technicians in WSS model-
ling with several useful functionalities for drawing the
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Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology—AQUA | 69.1 | 2020
network and for analysing the results inside the open-
source QGIS framework. The remainder of the paper
describes in detail the features and the novelty of this
python plugin of QGIS as follows. The section immediately
below presents the structure of QEPANET and the novelty
introduced, such as proper dedicated editing and graphical
tools. This is followed by a section showing the capabilities
of the plugin through practical examples. Then final remarks
and conclusions are summarized.
DESIGN
QEPANET is a QGIS plugin (available both for the discon-
tinued 2.x and for the new 3.x version) developed using the
standard QGIS plugin Python framework. QEPANET pro-
vides an interface to the EPANET functionalities inside
QGIS, going from the design and drawing of the network
to the analysis of the simulation results. Since it also
includes compiled EPANET libraries for the main operating
systems (Linux, MacOS and Windows), it is virtually poss-
ible to complete a full simulation cycle without ever
leaving QGIS.
QEPANET uses the standard EPANET network text
format (the well-known ‘.inp’ file) to store its projects and
thus the entire network topology and simulation configuration,
but with two main advantages: first, there is no need to create
additional files to store the network data and second, it is poss-
ible to import into QGIS existing QEPANET networks. The
.inp file used by QEPANET includes some additional propri-
eties that are not used in the standard EPANET (for
example, pipe material, the elevation correction, etc.). The
QEPANET .inp file can be used in standard EPANET without
compromising the model configuration, and it is ready to be
used for hydraulic simulations. An error appears when a
QEPANET .inp file is loaded in EPANET, remembering that
it is not possible to read QEPANET additional in EPANET.
With respect to existing QGIS tools dedicated to EPANET,
QEPANET adds some previously unseen features:
• a set of dedicated editing tools (in a dockable toolbar)
facilitating the management of the hydraulic network.
These tools allow the creation, modification and deletion
of the network elements, and enforce the topology of the
 3 A. Menapace et al. | EPANET in QGIS framework: the QEPANET plugin
network. In addition, the creation of some elements is
automated (e.g., when a new pipe is drawn, nodes are
added to its ends, if not already present);
• the option of using a raster DEM (digital elevation model)
(Hirt ) to easily extract the elevations of the network
nodes. The DEM is a text file, organized as a matrix, that
contains the elevation of each point of an area;
• support for 3D pipe lengths: QEPANET takes into
account the elevation profile to automatically calculate
the actual pipe length;
• a graphical section editor to define and adjust the pos-
ition of the pipes in relation to the ground;
• definition of the maximum commercial pipe length
inserting intermediate vertices along the pipeline. In
this way, in addition to having a better estimate of the
overall pipe length and a better planimetric trend, it is
possible to determine the number of individual pipes’ sec-
tions that constitute the whole pipeline;
• easy definition of pipe properties such as material and
roughness. It is, for instance, possible to choose the material,
and the plugin presents a range of realistic roughness values
to choose from. The properties are managed by the plugin
GUI, so that there are internal controls on their consistency
(and there is support for both SI and imperial units);
• a tool to edit the curves and patterns used to define the
operation of pumps and junctions;
• a series of graphical tools to analyse the simulation
results, that include thematic mapping of the network
and graphs of the modelled entities through time.
EXAMPLE USAGE AND CAPABILITY
The main functionality of the plugin is to draw and design a
WSS in a GIS environment easily. In this way, the physical
components of the system (junctions, pipes, reservoirs,
tanks, valves and pumps) are automatically geo-referenced
in the 3D space.
Installation and project start/load
In order to use the plugin in QGIS, it must be installed from
the QGIS Plugins Installer (Thiede et al. ). After the
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Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology—AQUA | 69.1 | 2020
installation, all the functions are available, and to launch
the plugin it is simply necessary to click on the new blue
icon in the toolbars. The window that appears allows the
choice of whether to start a new EPANET project or to
load an existing WSS network. The plugin works and
saves any network information in the .inp format file,
which is the same as that used by EPANET. Therefore, an
.inp project created in QEPANET can be imported without
compatibility problems in EPANET, and vice versa. Further-
more, in the .inp file generated by QEPANET, there is
additional information that may be necessary for a designer,
for example, the pipe distance with respect to the ground
elevation and the piping material.
Draw a WSS network and define attributes
To design a new WSS network, the first step is to import a
DEM into QGIS, dragging the DEM file in the QGIS work-
space and choosing the right coordinate system depending
on the DEM origin. In this way, the WSS network will
have a geo-referenced elevation layer as a reference.
The WSS design starts with the definition of the reser-
voirs/tanks’ positions. The plugin acquires the spatial
coordinates of the entered entity directly. It also assigns
automatically the elevation taking as input the previously
loaded DEM. The elevation can be modified manually by
the user and corrected, accounting for the real distance
from the ground.
Then, it is possible to draw the junctions and the pipes. The
pipes are simply broken lines connecting junctions. For this
reason, unlike EPANET, it is possible to draw a pipe directly,
and the plugin will automatically assign a start node and an
end node with the relative elevation. The pipe length is calcu-
lated automatically considering not only the planimetry but
also the altimetry. It is possible to assign a roughness value
to the pipe by entering a known roughness value (as in
EPANET) or by assigning a material to the pipe (steel, cast
iron, PE, etc.) and then a roughness value from the database
in the standard range of roughness for that material (Moody
). Finally, in regards to the design of the pipes, it is possible
to choose to automatically insert intermediate vertices at a pre-
determined relative distance along the pipe.
To insert valves and pumps’ entities, once they are
selected, a single click is necessary on the point of the
 4 A. Menapace et al. | EPANET in QGIS framework: the QEPANET plugin
pipeline at the insertion point. The plugin, since EPANET
treats valves and pumps like linking objects (e.g., pipes),
automatically inserts two new start and end nodes, breaking
the existing pipe.
Run a hydraulic simulation and display the results
When the design of the WSS network is finished, and after
having defined the water demands at the nodes, it is possible
to carry out the hydraulic simulation based on the EPANET
solver. The definition of the simulation duration and of the
numerical parameters can be set from inside the plugin
using the appropriate tab.
When a simulation is launched, the plugin invokes the
EPANET libraries that save the simulation results as an
output file, called ‘out’, that in turn can be loaded into
QGIS to display the results.
The results, similarly to what can also be done in
EPANET, are divided into nodes’ values (pressures and
head) and pipes’ values (velocity and flow rates). Figure 1
shows a WSS modelled with QEPANET during the design
phase, and the results display a phase on the left and right,
respectively. More information about the plugin is available
in the Supplementary material. The documentation consists
of a tutorial and the QEPANET file used as an example
in the presented work. You can always find the updates
at the following link https://gitlab.com/albertodeluca/
Figure 1 | Interface of the QEPANET plugin with the dedicated toolbars in the drawing phase on the left and the results displayed on the right. The results show the pressure in the
junctions and the velocity along the pipes.
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Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology—AQUA | 69.1 | 2020
qepanet; in particular, in the README file there are indi-
cations to download the plugin documentation.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have introduced the QEPANET plugin for
endowing EPANET with a geo-referenced interface in QGIS
environment. The proposed Python plugin allows modelling
of a WSS from the drawing to the results viewing through ad
hoc editing and graphical tools, without ever leaving QGIS.
New functionalities have been introduced suitable for
supporting the entire WDSs modelling process, such as auto-
matic elevations’ detection and 3D pipe lengths’ calculation.
It is to be noted that the current QEPANET version
covers most of the EPANET functionalities, but not all of
them. In particular, support for emitters, controls and qual-
ity is still missing. Any suggestions, bug reports or
contributions from external parties are appreciated and
can be provided via the QEPANET project available on
GitLab under the GNU General Public License version 2.
Software availability
QEPANET is available on the world wide web at https://
gitlab.com/albertodeluca/qepanet and http://plugins.qgis.
org/plugins/qepanet.
 5 A. Menapace et al. | EPANET in QGIS framework: the QEPANET plugin
License: GNU General Public License version 2
System requirements: QGIS version 3.4.0 or higher for
the plugin version 2.4 (QGIS version 2.14.0 minimum
and 2.99.0 maximum for the plugin version 0.94.1).
Installation: using QGIS Plugins Installer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was funded by the EFRE-FESR project: ‘Thermo
Fluid Dynamics, infrastructures for applied research’ (ERDF
2014-2020, CUP: I52F16000850005) and by the research
project ‘AI-ALPEN: Supply of drinking water in alpine
regions’ (third call for Research projects funded by Autonomy
Province of Bozen-341 Italy, CUP: B26J16000300003).
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
The Supplementary Material for this paper is available
online at https://dx.doi.org/10.2166/aqua.2019.087.
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