Integration comes from an agreement about how models describe themselves, exchange data, and march through time. The HydroCouple interface definitions are that agreement: a C++ specification, building on OpenMI 2.0 concepts and extending them for standard geospatial data and high-performance computing.
Public water infrastructure is increasingly operated through its digital representation. When that representation is locked in proprietary formats and closed couplings, the public loses the ability to inspect, reproduce, and extend the models that govern real decisions about flooding, overflows, and water quality. Open interface definitions make the digital layer as public as the pipes.
A coupled composition is a declared artifact listing which components, which connections, and which data. Results can be audited and rerun.
Any conforming component can participate, open or commercial. The standard levels the field for every participant.
New processes such as water quality, ecology, and energy join the composition by implementing the interfaces. Existing models stay as they are.
The specification is organized around a small set of contracts. A model becomes a component by implementing them; the runtime composes components into coupled simulations.
HydroCouple builds on established open standards, so compositions interoperate with the GIS, sensor, and scientific-data tooling agencies and utilities already run.
Points, curves, polygons, polyhedral surfaces, and TINs as the shared geometry model for exchanged quantities.
Model inputs, results, and observed data in a single portable, queryable container, the native I/O strategy of Open-Source SWMM 6.0.
Gridded forcing, reanalysis products, and multidimensional results with rich, self-describing metadata.
Built on the OpenMI standard's concepts, extended for geospatial data types, HPC execution, and customizable exchange workflows.
Digital water infrastructure has to answer operational questions (how big, how fast, how uncertain) that a single desktop run cannot. The interface definitions were designed from the start for parallel and distributed execution.
Spawn independent copies of a composition for multi-objective calibration, ensemble forecasting, and Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis.
Customizable data-exchange workflows (loop-driven time marching, iterative coupling, optimization drivers) without modifying the components themselves.
Engine-level parallel backends (OpenMP, CUDA, HIP, SYCL via Kokkos in Open-Source SWMM 6.0) behind the same component interface.