The City of Aurora is Colorado’s third largest city, a diverse, rapidly growing city in the Denver metro area. With the city’s population projected to increase 50% by 2050, Aurora Water is looking to secure a reliable water supply for the future with the construction of a new reservoir. Aurora Water needed help optimizing the reservoir size and understanding the potential improvements to its water supply system.

Lynker staff developed and maintain a custom water allocation model called CRAM, which is used to perform detailed analysis of complex water resource systems. The Aurora CRAM model is the City of Aurora’s raw water supply system model used to support decisions for short- and long-range planning of the city’s raw water supply. Lynker used the Aurora CRAM model to determine an optimal size for Wild Horse Reservoir, evaluating system performance through reliability metrics including firm yield.

Lynker combined modeling expertise with scientific expertise to go beyond the historical data and stress the city’s water supply system using synthetic hydrology and climate-adjusted hydrology. By modeling an ensemble of simulations, we were able to provide Aurora Water with enhanced estimates of system reliability, documenting additional system yield and additional water storage, and providing recommendations on reservoir size.