EPANET is a public-domain, water distribution system modeling software package developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Water Supply and Water Resources Division. It performs extended-period simulation of hydraulic and water-quality behavior within pressurized pipe networks and is designed to be "a research tool that improves our understanding of the movement and fate of drinking-water constituents within distribution systems".[1] EPANET first appeared in 1993.[2] EPANET 2 is available both as a standalone program and as an open-source toolkit (Application Programming Interface in C). Its computational engine is used by many software companies that developed more powerful, proprietary packages, often GIS-centric. The EPANET ".inp" input file format,[3] which represents network topology, water consumption, and control rules, is supported by many free and commercial modeling packages. Therefore, it is arguably considered as the industry standard.
