The Digital Era in Hydraulic Engineering Comes with Applications of Artificial Intelligence

The Building-Information Modelling (BIM) of hydraulic engineering structures introduces new opportunities for analysis. It is the digital core of the automation of design, construction, and operation processes in water management. Managing the communication of BIM with other hydraulic engineering specific platforms is a relevant current field of research.

Site characteristics, interconnected urban infrastructure and construction methods significantly influence the Infrastructure Engineering and Water Resource Management design process. Digitization and BIM development including its accompanying technologies create the needed prerequisites for hydraulic engineering facilities to be designed and constructed in parallel where any influences from the site influence the design process in real time .

The present study illustrates such a technology development implemented and tested on an example from the practice - a project for a river correction in a settlement. The approach takes advantage of the ability to automate the workflow and communication between Civil 3D and HEC-RAS using Dynamo for Civil 3D. The procedure makes it possible to generate data from design options to fill in a desired sets of parameters. Experiments are being made to create a Deep Learning model -replacement of HEC-RAS for the verification of necessary changes in BIM, as imposed by the general development of the project in the parts roads and sewage system in real time.

The application of Deep Learning techniques requires large volumes of data. The results show that BIM and its automation create prerequisites for using Deep Learning more often. Herein, the possibility of blunders is avoided as such a volume of data would be difficult to obtain manually.