Co-simulation for the design of controllers in urban drainage systems

A co-simulation framework that uses two software tools (i.e., Matlab, Python or LabVIEW, and SWMM) is presented. The co-simulation is performed thanks to a tool that has been developed, and which is the main contribution of this work. This approach uses the storm water management model (SWMM), becoming a solution to the lack of tools to test controllers for urban drainage systems (UDS). Specifically, MatSWMM, an open source framework that can be used to this end, is presented. Additionally, in order to illustrate the features of the co-simulation methodology, some of the issues of using control-oriented models (COM) are pointed out and simulated with MatSWMM, through a simple case study. To this end, and as an illustrative example of the controllers that might be implemented with the proposed tool, a linear model of the system is built and a decentralized population dynamics-based controller is tested. The results obtained show the advantages of the co-simulation tool to evaluate the control performance of these systems.