Publications
Increased efficiency of existing water systems will more than ever require reliable data. Reliable data play a key role in the analysis, monitor, and forecast of water system behaviours as bad quality data may result in an erroneous decision scheme. The data are provided in a large part by the measuring system, in which a sensor is an important element.
Generally raw data may include errors such as noise, drift, outliers, malfunctions, etc. In addition to the possible measurement deviations related to the sensor performance itself, the errors can occur due to various reasons, e.g., the sensor installation problem and the measurement assumption violation. Thus, it is important to equip the data system with procedures that can detect the related problems and assist the user in monitoring and processing the incoming data. The data validation is an essential step to improve data reliability.
This report is a brief market review of some sensors which present an interest for the PREPARED partners, for both research and demonstration activities. It is not an exhaustive review but only a focus on some specific on-line sensors which are either new or still not frequently used in urban water systems. It includes information mainly about metal, emerging pollutants, water level and H2S and odours sensors.
The deliverable PREPARED 2011.025 D.2.4.1 consists of two parts, a database and an explanatory report. The database is called: D 2.4.1 Risk reduction measures database (RRDB). The explanatory report is called: D 2.4.1 Risk reduction measures. Supporting document to RRDB structure.
This document introduces the risk reduction database structure, providing background information, a classification of RRM and presents the adopted database structure as well as the selected criteria to characterise each measure.
The deliverables D 2.2.2 Risk identification database (RIDB) contents and data structure (PREPARED 2011.022) and D 2.2.3 Preliminary water cycle risk identification database (RIDB) (PREPARED 2011.023) are related. The present explanatory report “Risk identification database supporting document for definition of contents and data structure” is the supporting document to these two databases and of an additional deliverable (PREPARED 2011.024) entitled Register of historical accidents structure.
This document presents the adopted structure and contents for a risk identification database (RIDB), providing background information on the data needed for event characterization (event description, hazard, risk sources, contributing causes, existing measures to reduce risk, risk factors, typical consequence dimensions) and on data for estimating the effect of climate changes in event risk. This RIDB is intended to facilitate the task of risk identification in the WCSP. Additionally, a register of historical accidents is proposed.
This report summarises the presentations and deliberations of the PREPARED Steering Board and Project Advisory Committee at a meeting held in ‘Berlin from 29 – 30 September 2011.
This report presents outcomes from an intense research phase in which our partner utility in the Prepared project, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW), and other organisations with some role in water management in Wales have been examined in terms of their work towards climate change adaptation.
Climate change adaptation may involve using new technologies, but may equally involve new ways of working within and between organisations, or between organisations and the public. This report focuses on the organisational and social processes through which adaptation occurs in the water sector.
This report deals with is the development of optimal sensor location methods to provide reliable and useful measurements in urban water systems for the most common applications.
Actual and future urbanization require an optimal management of water in term of quantity and quality, especially runoff water and wastewater. Separate or combined sewers generate sometimes dysfunctions, sources of degradation for the receiving environment and a certain economic cost. It is thus advisable to control the hydraulic conditions within networks (height of water and flow-rate). It is necessary to have a better understanding of free surface flows into narrow channels as they are the main components of urban networks. Measurement devices are under development, but a majority of the measurement systems, which include both flow rate and water quality measurements, present specific difficulties related to this parameter. Focus has been placed on this specific point in this research work.
Climate change is one of the most challenging issues that the world faces: it impacts on every level of human existence. It manifests in either too much or too little water; too high or too low temperatures; and in new diseases, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity, etc. While climate change is a global prob-lem which requires globally acceptable solutions, these solutions need to originate from and hinge on local action and response.
Adaptation is one vital response to the challenges brought about by climate change. The objective of adaptation is to reduce vulnerability to climate change, thereby reducing negative impact. Hence adaptation, together with mitigation, is a critical response strategy.
The solutions that emerge from the final outputs of the PREPARED project will be used by other cities of the world to form the basis to adapt their infrastructure, management, policy and technical invest-ment programmes to buffer them against the possible impact of climate change. The PREPARED Advocacy Strategy lays the groundwork to get the innovative adaptation results out to the world.
Assessing uncertainties is done systematically in almost all hard sciences research fields, and in more and more numerous engineering domains. In the field of urban water systems, this is still not a sys-tematic and common practice. One of the aims of PREPARED is to promote, to contribute and to exemplify how to systematically evaluate uncertainties in urban water systems.
Assessing uncertainties is necessary to better quantify and to improve the quality of measurements; to better contribute in modeling, by accounting for uncertainties in model structures, inputs, parame-ters and outputs; and to better help in decision making.
The objectives of this deliverable are to introduce the two internationally recognised standards for assessment of measurement uncertainties; and to provide examples of application.
Many documents already exist: this deliverable will not replicate them, but cites and refers to them as much as necessary.
This report provides a critical state-of-the-art literature review on the subject of optimal sensor place-ment in Urban Water Systems (UWS) It presents a summary of existing sensor macro-location design methodologies intended to facilitate the collection of relevant and efficient measurements in UWS. Model calibration is the focus of this review.
This report introduces the history of hydraulic and water quality modelling for both water distribution systems and urban waste water systems and details the key challenges relating to their practical application. Section 3 discusses model calibration and its connection to sampling design. Sections 4 and 5 discuss sampling design methods and algorithms. Section 5 detailed accounts of existing macro-location approaches and algorithms that are independent of their objective functions. Section 6 concludes the report and identifies future actions.
The report is a useful resource for researchers involved in sensor network design, including those involved in the development of relevant tools.
Potential effects of climate dynamics on the urban water cycle can involve the aggravation of existing conditions as well as occurrence of new hazards or risk factors. The risks associated with expected climate changes have to be dealt with by the society in general and by the water utilities and other stakeholders in particular.
The challenges created by climate changes require an integrated approach for dealing with existing and expected levels of risk. Given the interactions of urban water and natural systems, adaptation measures should address all water cycle components and their interactions.
This report proposes a generic framework to identify relevant risks and opportunities while incorporat-ing uncertainties, in a systematic way. The main purpose of this report is to setup an overall frame-work for development and implementation of Water Cycle Safety Plans (WCSP).
Throughout this document, examples and tools are provided to clarify and assist implementing a WCSP framework.
This report evaluates existing methods to assimilate data and correct predictive errors to improve the application of numerical models in real-time. Data Assimilation (DA) approaches have been applied and developed widely in related scientific disciplines for updating model predictions in real-time as new measurements become available.
Error-correction methodologies are relatively simple to implement and provide the ability to extend beyond DA approaches by reducing forecast error where observational data are unavailable. Such methods can implicitly account for a range of uncertainties provided these uncertainties are manifest in the deterministic model residual time-series derived off-line prior to application.
Joint state and parameter estimation approaches were developed where DA filters have been applied within calibration frameworks. A hierarchical approach for dealing with model uncertainty combining model calibration, data assimilation and error-correction applied at different temporal scales, blending different representations of uncertainty, may provide an optimal framework to account for uncertainty.
This report deals with two case studies in Istanbul and Barcelona.
Istanbul is a large city with a rapid growing population making demands on water supply. Domestic water use constitutes the major part of water consumption and the development of innovative water resources are needed to cope with the increase in water demand due to population increase and economic advancement as well as the adverse impacts of climate change. Along these lines, house-hold water reuse practices and utilisation of rain water will reduce the fresh water consumption..
Barcelona suffers from irregular precipitations (serious droughts and flash floods events) and is con-sidered a water scarce region. Different strategies to promote the use of alternative water resources (such as aquifer recharge, seawater desalination and reuse schemes) have been implemented. The construction of a presedimentation basin to store river water before entering the drinking water treat-ment plant is considered a feasible alternative. This system will entail a quantitative and qualitative homogenisation acting as a buffer and enabling storage of water produced during stormwater events.
In urban settings, supplying potable water will be a major challenge of the 21st century as most of the water consumption is for domestic use.
The basic questions for utility decision-makers are where to invest and what to invest in, while not knowing the type or extent of impact that can be expected.
This document aims at providing examples on how utilities have or will go ahead preparing their water supply and sanitation systems for the impact of climate change. It is a living document that will be updated regularly during the project when new solutions and initiatives are known.
Building a catalogue of adaptive solutions requires a minimum of classification and typology. But since the definition of ‘adaptation’ itself is still a subject under discussion, the choice was made to go back to the basics and to organise this document around three main questions: Adapt to what? What to adapt? and How to adapt?
PREPARED aims to gather urban utilities in Europe and worldwide to develop an advanced strategy in meeting the upcoming challenges for water supply and sanitation brought by climate change. This report describes increased technological capacity and performance of traditional water supply and sanitation systems by better use of sensors and models.
A common protocol was developed for sensor testing. The common test protocol is used to provide sufficient information to the testing organisation to carry out sensor tests and to make determinations about performance of tested sensors, and can lead to issuance of test reports. The test protocol can also be used as an administrative document that governs all important aspects of the testing and can serve as a test plan template.
The common test protocol was developed for different types of on-line sensors, including optical sen-sors, electronic noses and biosensors. The test protocol is fully compatible with the EN ISO 15839.
This report evaluates existing methods applied quantifying and reducing uncertainty in models for Urban Water Systems. Numerical models may be applied and aid in optimising the use of existing water supply and sanitation systems but such modelling approaches must consider inherent system uncertainty, which is reviewed in Section 2.
Model development should be considered as an iterative process alongside data collection. As such, sensitivity analysis methods outlined in Section 3 may be applied to reduce model uncertainty and monitoring costs by informing where network monitoring should take place.
A range of real-time approaches have been introduced in Section 4, which may be applied success-fully when coupled with the methods reviews in Section 3 for joint state and parameter estimation.
Although the methods presented here, as well as the techniques and can be considered as generic, the final selection of the methodologies to be applied depends also on the specific requirements of cities, and their data availability.
D2.3.1 - Major risk categories and associated critical risk event trees to quantify. Download (2 Mb)
This report focuses on defining risk and uncertainty, and details methods related to risk assessment, uncertainty analysis and propagation.
Risk is introduced and defined, followed by an introduction to risk assessment, with literature review details of several relevant methodologies, all of which could be used in the risk analysis of urban water systems. A summary of the most used methods is provided.
Deterministic quantitative risk assessment (QRA) is introduced, followed by the recognition that there is always some inherent uncertainty when dealing with the key facets of determining risk, leading to a discussion on stochastic QRA, which aims to account for the uncertainty using the methods described.
Finally, some preliminary risk categories for water systems are outlined and these are subsequently broken down to examine some potential social, environmental and economic risks posed by the various hazards that may impact the water systems in the face of a changing climate.
River floods are the most common natural disaster in Europe, and flood damage is expected to increase in the next decades. Among the assets at risks are water wells, which are used to abstract groundwater for the drinking water supply. Flooding of well fields can obstruct the supply of safe and sufficient drinking water, amongst others due to microbial and chemical contamination of the abstracted raw water.
This document provides practical guidelines on how to make water well fields ‘flood proof’. This includes adaptation of the well design, but also management procedures before, during and after flood events. The document builds upon the knowhow and practical experiences of water suppliers in the Netherlands and Germany, and is intended to be used by water suppliers in Europe and elsewhere.
How will PREPARED contribute to policy development and implementation, including the uptake of deliverables produced within the project by the intended end‐users? The end‐users being local mu-nicipalities and local utilities, regional and national authorities. But also how can PREPARED acceler-ate the uptake of new technologies, overall innovative approaches and decision support systems produced and demonstrated within PREPARED? How will PREPARED contribute to the development and implementation of EU policy within the Water Acquis? How will PREPARED help to achieve the Lisbon goals?
PREPARED is about the adaptation of the water supply and sanitation sector to cope with the impacts of climate change. It will do that by developing tools, approaches and decision support systems to assist water utilities. This provides guidance on how to deal with the uncertainty in the global IPCC scenarios to and the translation of scenarios to local level.
This report evaluates existing methods applied quantifying and reducing uncertainty in models for Urban Water Systems. Numerical models may be applied and aid in optimising the use of existing water supply and sanitation systems but such modelling approaches must consider inherent system uncertainty, which is reviewed in Section 2.
Model development should be considered as an iterative process alongside data collection. As such, sensitivity analysis methods outlined in Section 3 may be applied to reduce model uncertainty and monitoring costs by informing where network monitoring should take place.
A range of real-time approaches have been introduced in Section 4, which may be applied success-fully when coupled with the methods reviews in Section 3 for joint state and parameter estimation.
Although the methods presented here, as well as the techniques and can be considered as generic, the final selection of the methodologies to be applied depends also on the specific requirements of cities, and their data availability.
