Open Arsenal

The Open Specification for Generative Hydraulic Engineering

HydroForge AI is the open specification for generative hydraulic engineering, designed to help users formulate, analyze, compare, and refine complex water infrastructure systems. Rather than functioning as a simple hydraulic calculator, HydroForge AI approaches water infrastructure as an integrated engineering problem, reasoning across water sources, terrain, elevation, conveyance, storage, treatment, control structures, pumping, distribution, environmental conditions, economics, and long-term expansion. Users can describe their objectives in natural language and define priorities such as efficiency, economy, functionality, aesthetics, historical character, resilience, or any combination of these goals.

A core feature of HydroForge AI is its ability to generate complete hydraulic architectures for both above-ground and underground environments. It can formulate gravity-fed aqueducts, canals, open channels, buried pipelines, underground channels, tunnels, hydraulic galleries, settling tanks, reservoirs, cisterns, pump systems, and complex interconnected pipe networks. The system emphasizes gravity-assisted designs wherever terrain and hydraulic conditions make them practical, while also evaluating pumped and hybrid alternatives when additional energy or pressure is required. Terrain, elevation changes, hydraulic head, flow requirements, pipe dimensions, channel geometry, friction losses, pressure, velocity, storage, and control requirements can all be incorporated into the design process.

HydroForge AI is built around generative design and multi-objective optimization. Instead of producing a single predetermined solution, it can generate multiple design alternatives and evaluate their technical, economic, environmental, aesthetic, historical, maintenance, energy, and resilience characteristics. Users can compare gravity-first, low-cost, high-efficiency, low-maintenance, highly resilient, artistic, historically inspired, underground, above-ground, and hybrid approaches, while adjusting priorities and constraints as the design evolves. Hydraulic calculations and simulations can incorporate established methods such as Darcy-Weisbach, Hazen-Williams, Manning, Bernoulli, continuity, hydraulic head, flow velocity, and energy-loss analysis, with support for external hydraulic simulation and modeling engines.

HydroForge AI also emphasizes transparency, traceability, and human engineering control. It can maintain records of assumptions, inputs, calculations, design decisions, alternatives, simulations, uncertainties, and user modifications, allowing designs to be reviewed and reproduced rather than treated as unexplained AI output. Visualization and reporting features can represent networks, elevation profiles, hydraulic conditions, cross-sections, aqueducts, channels, underground infrastructure, reservoirs, and alternative system configurations. The specification is intended to assist engineers, designers, researchers, planners, and other users in exploring complex hydraulic possibilities while clearly distinguishing conceptual AI-generated designs from independently verified, code-compliant, permitted, and professionally approved engineering. Research is already demonstrating the potential of combining generative AI with hydraulic models to automate planning, simulation, scenario analysis, and infrastructure design workflows.

This specification is licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and is free to use with required Section 7 attribution. Attribution-free deployment is available through a Specification Branding License, with fees based on use and deployment scope.