Aurora Water Supply Planning

The beautiful Horsetooth Reservoir outside of Fort Collins, Colorado in winter.

Problem

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.

Solution

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.

Actionable Intelligence

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.

Relevant Capabilities

Climate Change and Population Growth

With decades of deep experience in natural hazards analyses and risk assessment, Lynker Intel partners with private and public organizations to operationalize climate change impact analytics, projections of population growth and subsequent increases in vulnerable assets, as well as other changes influencing hazard and risk exposure, in order to make better business and adaptation decisions for the future impacts of hazards. Decisions that must be made now.

Ocean Storm Waves Crashing into Seawall in front of Houses

Hydrologic Modeling and Forecasting

Lynker Intel has expert hydrologists with strong expertise in field work, data analysis, research, modeling, forecasting, and developing actionable data products across all water environments. We work with a holistic approach to solve water-related issues by considering the combined effect of weather, climate, water and human management.