Future climatic, demographic, technological, urban and socio-economic challenges call for more flexible and sustainable wastewater infrastructure systems. Exploratory modelling can help to investigate the consequences of these developments on the infrastructure. In order to explore large numbers of adaptation strategies, we need to re-balance the degree of realism of sewer network and ability to reflect key performance characteristics against the model's parsimony and computational efficiency. We present a spatially explicit algorithm for creating sanitary sewer networks that realistically represent key characteristics of a real system. Basic topographic, demographic and urban characteristics are abstracted into a squared grid of ‘Blocks’ which are the foundation for the sewer network's topology delineation. We compare three different pipe dimensioning approaches and found a good balance between detail and computational efficiency. With a basic hydraulic performance assessment, we demonstrate that we attain a computationally efficient and high-fidelity wastewater sewer network with adequate hydraulic performance. A spatial resolution of 250 m Block size in combination with a sequential Pipe-by-Pipe (PBP) design algorithm provides a sound trade-off between computational time and fidelity of relevant structural and hydraulic properties for exploratory modelling. We can generate a simplified sewer network (both topology and hydraulic design) in 18 s using PBP, versus 36 min using a highly detailed model or 1 s using a highly abstract model. Moreover, this simplification can cut up to 1/10^th to 1/50^th the computational time for the hydraulic simulations depending on the routing method implemented. We anticipate our model to be a starting point for sophisticated exploratory modelling into possible infrastructure adaptation measures of topological and loading changes of sewer systems for long-term planning.

未来的气候、人口、技术、城市和社会经济挑战需要更加灵活和可持续的废水基础设施系统。探索性建模可以帮助调查这些发展对基础设施的影响。为了探索大量的适应策略，我们需要重新平衡下水道网络的真实程度和反映关键性能特征的能力与模型的简约性和计算效率。我们提出了一种用于创建卫生下水道网络的空间显式算法，该网络真实地代表了真实系统的关键特征。基本地形、人口和城市特征被抽象为“块”的方形网格，这是下水道网络拓扑划分的基础。我们比较了三种不同的管道尺寸标注方法，并在细节和计算效率之间找到了良好的平衡。通过基本的水力性能评估，我们证明我们获得了一个计算效率高、保真度高、具有足够水力性能的废水下水道网络。 250 m 块大小的空间分辨率与顺序逐管 (PBP) 设计算法相结合，为探索性建模提供了计算时间与相关结构和水力特性的保真度之间的合理权衡。我们可以使用 PBP 在 18 秒内生成简化的下水道网络（拓扑和水力设计），而使用高度详细的模型需要 36 分钟，使用高度抽象的模型需要 1 秒。此外，这种简化可以将水力模拟的计算时间减少^1/10至^1/50 ，具体取决于所实施的布线方法。 我们预计我们的模型将成为复杂的探索性建模的起点，对下水道系统的拓扑和负荷变化的可能基础设施适应措施进行长期规划。