The Copper Coast water supply system serves a permanent population of approximately 10,000 people in three townships; Kadina, Moonta and Wallaroo on the Yorke Peninsula in the state of South Australia. Although the permanent population is relatively small, the Copper Coast is a popular tourist area in the summer months, which causes a significant population increase in this time.

In addition to this, there has been a significant increase in development in the region over the last ten years, including the recent construction of a marina and several large development proposals. To meet the increase in demand, a study was initiated to upgrade the water supply system for the region’s requirements for the next twenty-five years.

Prior to the study of the water supply system, South Australian Water needed to build the hydraulic model. This allowed them to analyze the existing system, identify problems and design a new system that would meet the area’s requirements. WaterGEMS, completely integrated with ESRI’s ArcGIS (the corporation’s GIS platform), is not only an extremely useful water distribution analysis tool, but the integration also allows spatial operations to be performed during the model building process.