Erin Fleet is a Project Engineer in the Water Business Unit with Barge Design Solutions, Inc. She is a professional engineer with extensive experience in hydraulic and water quality modeling. Erin graduated from Auburn University with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering. She is married with 3 children and resides in Montgomery, AL.

Bay County Utilities delivers an average of 27 million gallons per day (MGD) of water to over 175,000 residents throughout Bay County, including Panama City, Panama City Beach, and Tyndall Air Force Base. In October 2018, Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle. Among the destruction caused by this natural disaster was incredible damage to distribution system infrastructure in the county resulting in the inability to supply customers with potable water. The lack of a functioning (calibrated) hydraulic model and fully-encompassing GIS database led to intensive field efforts to bring pieces of the system back online through trial and error. Initially, Bay County went through a brief period of significant population reduction due to loss of housing, damaged businesses, and the destruction of Tyndall Air Force Base. However, by 2020 the County began experiencing unprecedented growth that continues through today and the foreseeable future. Without a calibrated hydraulic model, and with the added challenge of providing much of its water to wholesale customers (who may be less inclined to notify the Utility of potential developments), Bay County Utilities had no option but to react to the increasing water demands as development continued throughout the County. As the model was developed and calibrated, knowledge was gained about how certain portions of the system operated. Once complete, the model has been used to evaluate potential system improvement alternatives with respect to cost, contractual obligations to wholesale customers, level of service, water quality, and system resiliency.

This presentation will detail the efforts of updating Bay County Utilities’ distribution system GIS, developing and calibrating a hydraulic model, and using that model as a tool to plan for growth and to increase system resiliency in preparation for the next potential natural disaster.