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Staff sees sewer 'digital twin' (LUCID) to guide where infrastructure upgrades and developer costs will be required
Summary
Withers Ravenel demonstrated LUCID — a sewer-capacity digital twin — at the Belmont workshop, showing parcel-level downstream sewer constraints, an estimated 1,400 acres of redevelopable land, and a toolset staff can use to test development scenarios, prorate downstream costs and evaluate inflow-and-infiltration reduction strategies.
At the Sept. 15 Belmont City Council workshop, Eddie Staley of Withers Ravenel demonstrated LUCID, a land-use–based infrastructure decision model that links the city’s land-use scenarios to hydraulic sewer modeling and highlights areas where sewer capacity constraints or downstream upgrades would be required to support new development.
Staley described LUCID as an interactive “digital twin” accessible to city staff that layers GIS parcel information, lift-station data and hydraulic-model outputs. He said the team’s baseline analysis found about 1,400 acres of uncommitted or redevelopable land in the planning area and that modeling used a conservative assumption of about 300 gallons per day per residential unit for demand estimates.
The demonstration showed colored map overlays (green = minimal impact; red/purple = higher or severe downstream impacts) and calculated two practical planning metrics shown in the tool: cost per acre and cost per equivalent residential unit (ERU). Staley emphasized the model’s value for testers of “what-if” scenarios (changing density, storm-event design standards, or I&I reduction) and for estimating prorated developer costs versus broader community investment or cost-sharing strategies.
Council members and staff asked how the tool will remain current. Presenters said LUCID reads directly from the city’s GIS and from lift-station monitoring (Lift Command); as staff update GIS or as new flow-monitoring data arrive, the model updates. Withers Ravenel said they provide a managed-service option and will assist staff with updates if needed.
Limitations and use
Presenters clarified that the LUCID demonstration focused on sanitary sewer impacts; the current deployment does not model water distribution, transportation or public-safety resource needs, although those features can be added over time. Staff said the sewer-capacity report is nearly complete and that the model will serve as the living repository for that analysis once finalized.
What council can do with it
Staley and staff said the tool can guide decisions on whether to: require developer-funded upsizing, pursue public–private cost-sharing, institute system development fees, or invest in targeted inflow-and-infiltration reduction projects that may lower overall capital costs. They showed example outputs that indicated substantial variability in prorated downstream costs across the city and suggested the model can be used for CIP prioritization and to explain constraints to community members and developers.
Provenance: topicintro SEG 591; topfinish SEG 2630.
