Powerful system for modeling, exploration and management of water supply systems.
InfoWorks™ WS Pro is a powerful multi-user software platform for comprehensive hydraulic modelling of water supply systems. With more than 15 years on the international market, it quickly became a standard among hundreds of enterprises – designers, consultants and utility operators around the globe.
Integrating a powerful multi-user RDBS, proprietary stand-alone GIS-based modelling environment and state-of-the-art simulation engine, InfoWorks™ WS Pro has been used to create the largest and most complex hydraulic models in the world such as Shanghai water supply system (China, 400 000 links) и Miami – Dade (USA, 250 000 links), as well as in many real-time modelling, forecasting and operations management systems (IWLive).
InfoWorks™ WS Pro is a complex software platform with a wide range of applications in solving complex engineering problems. Here is just a very short list of its possible uses:
The comprehensive and purposely designed functionality allows for dramatic productivity boost of the engineering teams. In direct comparison with most other water supply modelling tools, the adoption of InfoWorks™ WS Pro can lead to work time savings by an order of magnitudes – from months and weeks to just a few days and hours. The platform brings high level of work flow automation thus significantly reducing the costs for designing, hydraulic modelling and operations management of water supply systems.
Why Survivor Stories Matter
Survivor stories are a powerful tool for raising awareness about social issues, promoting empathy and understanding, and inspiring change. By sharing their experiences, survivors can:
Types of Survivor Stories
Awareness Campaigns
Awareness campaigns are organized efforts to raise awareness about a specific issue or cause. They can take many forms, including:
Key Elements of Effective Survivor Stories and Awareness Campaigns
Best Practices for Sharing Survivor Stories
Examples of Effective Survivor Stories and Awareness Campaigns
Challenges and Limitations
Conclusion
Survivor stories and awareness campaigns are powerful tools for promoting empathy, understanding, and change. By sharing their experiences, survivors can inspire hope, raise awareness, and promote resilience. By following best practices and being mindful of challenges and limitations, we can create effective survivor stories and awareness campaigns that make a positive impact.
The incident involving Hong Kong actress Carina Lau Ka-ling often referred to in online searches as a "rape video" is a widely mischaracterized account of a 1990 kidnapping and the subsequent 2002 media controversy. There is no factual evidence of a rape video; rather, the trauma centered on forced topless photographs taken by triad members during her abduction. The 1990 Kidnapping
On 25 April 1990, while on her way to fellow actor Michael Miu’s home, Carina Lau was abducted by four men. Hong Kong Actress Carina Lau Ka-Ling Rape Video --BEST
Motive: The kidnapping was reportedly "punishment" ordered by a triad boss after Lau refused a film role in a movie titled Set Me Free.
Ordeal: She was held for approximately two hours, during which her captors blindfolded her and forced her to pose for topless photographs.
Assault Clarification: Lau has stated multiple times in interviews that she was not sexually assaulted or molested during the ordeal, though she was deeply terrified for her life. The 2002 East Week Controversy
The trauma resurfaced twelve years later in October 2002 when the Hong Kong magazine East Week published one of the topless photos on its cover.
There is no credible "rape video" featuring Hong Kong actress Carina Lau Ka-Ling. Any content marketed with such a title is a malicious fabrication or a clickbait scam.
The rumors surrounding such a video stem from a real-life traumatic incident in 1990, but official accounts and the actress herself have clarified that no sexual assault occurred:
The 1990 Kidnapping: On April 25, 1990, Lau was abducted for approximately two hours by triad members after she refused a film offer. During this time, her captors forced her to strip and took nude photographs of her as "punishment" and for future blackmail.
The 2002 Controversy: Twelve years later, in October 2002, the Hong Kong magazine East Week published a distressed, semi-nude photo of Lau from the kidnapping on its cover. This caused a massive public outcry and protests from the Hong Kong entertainment community, led by stars like Jackie Chan and Tony Leung Chiu-wai.
Official Statements: Carina Lau has explicitly stated in interviews that while she was humiliated and photographed, she was not molested or sexually assaulted.
The magazine was forced to cease publication shortly after the 2002 incident, and its chief editor eventually served a five-month prison sentence for publishing the photo.
One survivor story that stands out is that of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for women's education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. Malala's story begins in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, where she was born in 1997. Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, was an educator and activist who ran a school in their hometown.
Growing up, Malala witnessed the Taliban's rise to power and their attempts to suppress education, particularly for girls. In 2009, at the age of 11, Malala began writing a blog for the BBC, detailing her life under Taliban rule and advocating for girls' education. Her activism quickly gained international attention, and she became a symbol of resistance against the Taliban's efforts to deny girls access to education. Why Survivor Stories Matter Survivor stories are a
On October 9, 2012, Malala was shot by the Taliban while she was on her way to school. The attack sparked widespread outrage and solidarity, with many people around the world calling for her to receive medical treatment and protection. Malala survived the attack and continued to advocate for girls' education, even in the face of death threats.
Malala's story highlights the importance of awareness campaigns and survivor stories in bringing attention to social issues. Her advocacy work has inspired millions of people around the world to take action and demand that governments prioritize education and human rights.
Some key takeaways from Malala's story include:
Malala's story is just one example of the many survivor stories that have raised awareness about social issues and inspired change. Other notable examples include:
These stories, and many others like them, demonstrate the power of survivor stories and awareness campaigns in bringing attention to social issues and inspiring change.
Psychologists Green and Brock (2000) posited that when individuals are “transported” into a narrative, their critical resistance lowers. In a campaign context, a survivor’s detailed journey—from harm to help—absorbs the audience. This transportation leads to belief change that aligns with the story’s moral, making statistical arguments more resonant post-narrative.
Survivors must understand exactly where, when, and how their story will be used. Will it be on a billboard? A TikTok ad? A grant proposal? As their recovery evolves, their comfort with sharing may change. Ethical campaigns build in "revocation clauses" allowing survivors to pull their story at any time, no questions asked.
We are moving into an era of precision advocacy. Generic "awareness month" posts are losing traction. Audiences are fatigued by slacktivism—the shallow "thoughts and prayers" post that requires no change.
The future belongs to campaigns that weaponize specific, actionable survivor testimony to dismantle specific, siloed problems.
When we hear a statistic—for example, "1 in 3 women experience intimate partner violence"—our brain processes this as abstract data. It triggers an intellectual response, but often activates a defense mechanism known as psychic numbing. The sheer scale of the problem overwhelms us, causing us to shut down.
However, when we hear a single survivor—"He locked me in the bathroom for three days"—the brain's mirror neurons fire. Suddenly, the listener isn't analyzing a problem; they are feeling a person. This is known as the identifiable victim effect. One story breaks through the wall of indifference that a thousand statistics cannot scale.
The future of survivor-story campaigns lies in interactivity and structural change. Passive viewing (watching a video) is less effective than interactive digital storytelling where audiences choose questions to ask a virtual survivor avatar (used successfully in sexual assault prevention training for the US military). Break the silence : Survivor stories help to
Furthermore, awareness campaigns must be paired with resource campaigns. A survivor story about domestic violence that does not include a functioning shelter hotline is unethical. The ultimate metric is not how many people “felt sad,” but whether policy changes or funding for services increased.
With great narrative power comes great responsibility. The line between advocacy and exploitation is razor thin. A poorly executed campaign can re-traumatize the survivor and desensitize the audience.
Here are the four pillars of ethical survivor storytelling in awareness campaigns:
Title: From Silence to Strength: How Survivor Stories Fuel Real Awareness Campaigns
Intro:
“For 3 years, Maria didn’t say the word ‘assault’ out loud. Then she saw a bus ad that read: ‘It’s not your fault. Call this number.’ That ad was part of our ‘You Are Seen’ campaign. Today, Maria is one of our story ambassadors.”
Section 1: Why Stories Hit Harder Than Statistics
Section 2: The Ethics of Sharing Survivor Stories
Section 3: Campaigns That Worked (Mini Case Studies)
Section 4: How to Build a Survivor-Centered Campaign
Conclusion:
“Awareness campaigns don’t save lives—people do. And people connect through stories. If you’re a survivor reading this: your story, in your time, in your way, is a lantern in the dark. If you’re an advocate: amplify, don’t interrupt.”
InfoWorks™ WS Pro has been built upon a powerful, proprietary spatial RDBMS. Without competition on the market, the platform allows for an unlimited number of users to work simultaneously in shared spatial databases. Hence, the engineers can use shared data libraries, tool sets and database settings in one single standard environment without the need of constant data transfers from one workstation to another.
A complete built-in tool set allows integration with external corporate RDBMS and file systems, such as GIS, SCADA, ERP, CRM, etc. The software can import / export data from / to many standard formats - ESRI SHP, ESRI GeoDatabase, MapInfo TAB, MS Access, MS SQL Server, ORACLE Database and more.
InfoWorks™ WS Pro brings out-of-the-box all tools required for building and managing the modelling databases – from database structure management to user access control. In addition to the standard WS Master Database, the software platform can flawlessly use MS SQL Server and ORACLE Database as its default data store. The built-in functionality is truly easy to use so even users with standard computer skills can set up complex multi-user modelling environments without the need of IT professional support.
InfoWorks™ WS Pro uses a state of the art simulation engine, which inherits from and dramatically enhances the WESNET system – the first in the world software tool that has been purposely developed for modelling of water supply networks. In contrast, most competitive products on the market are based on adapted computational cores originally designed for other industries, such as oil and gas pipelines, or on generic network optimisation algorithms. Several characteristics, among many, of the InfoWorks™ WS Pro’s simulation engine justify its leading market position:
Along with the standard hydrodynamic simulations, the InfoWorks™ WS Pro computational engine provides a wide range of special simulation types, such as fire flow, critical links analysis, shutdown impact analysis, pipe flushing, leakage detection, transient flow analysis over thousands of objects simultaneously (requires InfoWorks® TS license) and more – almost all without the need of editing the geospatial model itself. These simulation types allow for dramatic savings of work time, often by an order of magnitudes – from days to just minutes, especially when large models (tens of thousands of objects) are to be analysed, thus justifying once again the industry-leading position of InfoWorks™ WS Pro on the international market.
InfoWorks™ WS Pro can be purchased as a variety of licensing options allowing any combination of work seats. The flexible licensing scheme provides cost effective purchase plans for both large organizations and small engineering teams (even individuals and freelancers). The basic licensing options are:
All of the main InfoWorks™ WS Pro versions can be purchased with or without limitation in the number of modelled links with many combinations available, thus substantially decreasing the total purchase price. Additional cost savings can be achieved with the following licensing options:
When purchasing InfoWorks™ WS Pro, the clients can freely combine the number and the type of the licenses in order to achieve the optimal proportion between price and functionality. All clients with valid annual maintenance agreements can upgrade (permanently or temporary) their licenses for only the difference in the list prices at the time of upgrade. For more information please contact us.