Built in Australia, for water utilities everywhere.
HydroDSS is being built by Dr. Ali Ershadi and the QuestFeed team.
A small core team. A serious infrastructure-intelligence platform already running in production for planning (ZoneDSS) and regulatory (AuditDSS) verticals. HydroDSS is a cloud-native platform for water and sewer network modelling, built on the same data engineering and governed delivery stack — built deliberately, validated openly, shipped only when it can survive an audit.
A tightening triangle.
Water utilities globally face three pressures arriving at once. Aging infrastructure running past its design life. Climate uncertainty that breaks the historical patterns models were calibrated against. And more network to model — distribution, sewer, stormwater — than desktop tools and per-seat licences were ever priced for.
The tools utilities have are excellent at what they were built for. Hydraulic simulators solve the physics. Asset registers track inventory. GIS maps the network. But they live on the desktop, in separate silos, behind per-seat licences and token meters — a different tool for distribution than for sewer, and a model that sits in a file on one engineer's laptop.
The gap isn't another desktop tool. It's the modelling platform itself, moved into the cloud — water and sewer in one workspace, your existing model imported and georeferenced, a shared asset register and map, and a differentiable engine that turns calibration from a slog into a solve. Risk and renewals build on top, every output traceable.
That's what HydroDSS is.
Four principles, locked in commit one.
Engineering investment compounds when the principles don't churn. These four shape every decision we make about the platform, the engine, and the foundation.
- 1
Modelling belongs in the cloud.
Out of the desktop and off the one licensed laptop. A model your whole team can open in a browser, on a shared map, versioned and georeferenced — no per-seat tokens, no ArcGIS dependency, no file passed around by email.
- 2
Your model is yours.
Bring it in and take it out, without lock-in. Lossless EPANET .inp round-trip, GIS import from the formats you already use, and two- or three-point georeferencing onto the real map. Migration, not a trap.
- 3
Match the trusted reference; don't out-claim it.
The engine reproduces EPANET to within 0.1% before it does anything clever. Where we go broader — transient, floodplain, groundwater — we bring the trusted public-domain solver to the cloud rather than pretend to out-physics the incumbents.
- 4
Every output traceable and auditable.
Which data, which assumption, which run — every number traces back to its source. Built so an engineer can defend it and an auditor can replay it. Defensibility by construction, not a dashboard colour.
Small core. Big platform.
HydroDSS is being built by Dr. Ali Ershadi and a small core team at QuestFeed Pty Ltd — an Australian infrastructure-intelligence company headquartered on the Gold Coast.
QuestFeed's other products are in production today: ZoneDSS, a planning-intelligence platform live across NSW, QLD, and VIC — plus New York City and San Francisco — that resolves planning obligations per lot; and AuditDSS, a regulatory-intelligence platform covering 320 corpora across 21 jurisdictions. HydroDSS inherits their data engineering and governed delivery stack.
HydroDSS turns that platform to water and sewer networks: a cloud workspace where utilities and their consultants model, migrate, and georeference networks — with the asset register, the GIS, and the differentiable engine in one place, and risk and renewals built on top.
Coming 2026. Built deliberately.
We're not in a hurry. Water utilities buy on reliability, defensibility, and not being locked in — none of which is rushed into existence. The build is in flight on a timeline that lets each piece be validated before it ships.
Platform in private build
The platform, engine, and Foundation are documented. Distribution and sewer modelling, GIS import, and georeferencing run in development; the data stack — geospatial, location, Earth observation, regulatory — is already in production for the planning and regulatory verticals.
Pilot conversations
Early conversations with utilities, consulting engineers, and software-vendor partners. Waitlist opens later in the year. Pilot programme follows.
Wider coverage
The data foundation already spans NSW, QLD, and VIC, plus New York City and San Francisco. New Zealand, UK, and EU are on the roadmap; the Earth-observation and regulatory layers are already global.
Contact channels open later in 2026. Until then, the engine, the Foundation, the spec catalog, and the resources are documented in detail. Start there.