Developing a water resilient city with sensor data

2020-04-20 16:35:32

On Thursday April 16 our partner the Future City Foundation hosted an online get-together. Anton Jacobson was invited to talk about the SCOREwater project, in specific the Göteborg case study. Approximately 60 people from all around the world participated. The subject of the gathering was smart water management for resilient cities, and mr. Jacobsen had some interesting practical insights regarding the uses high-tech sensors and sensor data.

Missed it? You can watch it back on YouTube following this link: https://youtu.be/NjZpZ1WFIa8

Below some highlights of the talk of mr. Jacobsen.

A need for water management

Anton Jacobson (IVL) is the case leader of the Göteborg case, one of the three case studies of the SCOREwater project. He mentions that in the past few years, the focus on managing water in cities has increased. This has multiple reasons, the most important being urbanization and climate change. Because of urbanization, the need of clean water in cities has increased. And because of climate change, there are heavier rainfalls and longer periods of droughts. This has consequences for the way water is used.

Today there are many recommendation about water systems. These recommendations are not all equally usable, because there is limited knowledge about water systems. SCOREwater aims to help with providing this knowledge.

Three cases

Within the SCOREwater project there are three cases. In the city of Amersfoort (Netherlands) the main focus is on flooding and modelling to investigate and model floods in specific areas. In Barcelona (Spain) the focus is on waste water management, prevention and early detection of incidents. With sensor data they aim to reach a more effective way of maintaining the sewers. In Goteborg (Sweden), the main focus is on managing water pollution in the industrial sector. In a later stage of the project all the lessons learned from all the cases will be gathered in an online environment, so stay tuned for that!

Pollution warning systems

Since Anton is the contact manager at IVL in Goteborg, he elaborated about the Goteborg case. Every case has a specific focus, the Goteborg case focuses on water pollution in the industrial sector. It contributes to less polluted water in construction projects through a well-designed monitoring system. At construction sites, the runoff water can be polluted by all the building activities. The plan is to place sensors close to the construction sites in different drains to measure the runoff water for pollutants. The sensor data is then send to a digital platform and translated to readable input. With this technique it’s easier to pinpoint the exact location of the pollution and to undertake adequate measures.

This is still under development, and there are many possible services that could be built on top of this sensor data. One of the possibilities is to develop an early warning system for polluted water. Pinpointing the exact location of the pollution in an early stage helps to take quick action, reducing the environmental and economic impact (cleaning up pollution costs something).

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Download the presentation here: Link

View the YouTube recording here: Link