Urban hydroinformatics: past, present and future

This is the author accepted manuscriptHydroinformatics, as an interdisciplinary domain that blurs boundaries between water science, data science and computer science, is constantly evolving and reinventing itself. At the heart of this evolution, lies a continuous process of critical (self) appraisal of the discipline’s past, present and potential for further evolution, that creates a positive feedback loop between legacy, reality and aspirations. The power of this process is attested by the successful story of hydroinformatics thus far, which has arguably been able to mobilize wide ranging research and development and get the water sector more in tune with the digital revolution of the past 30 years. In this context, this paper attempts to trace the evolution of the discipline, from its computational hydraulics origins to its present focus on the complete socio-technical system, by providing at the same time, a functional framework to improve the understanding and highlight the links between different strands of the state-of-art hydroinformatic research and innovation. Building on this state-of-art landscape, the paper then attempts to provide an overview of key developments that are coming up, on the discipline’s horizon, focusing on developments relevant to urban water management, while at the same time, highlighting important legal, ethical and technical challenges that need to be addressed to ensure that the brightest aspects of this potential future are realized. Despite obvious limitations imposed by a single paper’s ability to report on such a diverse and dynamic field, it is hoped that this work contributes to a better understanding of both the current state of hydroinformatics and to a shared vision on the most exciting prospects for the future evolution of the discipline and the water sector it serves

Smart Urban Water Networks

This book presents the paper form of the Special Issue (SI) on Smart Urban Water Networks. The number and topics of the papers in the SI confirm the growing interest of operators and researchers for the new paradigm of smart networks, as part of the more general smart city. The SI showed that digital information and communication technology (ICT), with the implementation of smart meters and other digital devices, can significantly improve the modelling and the management of urban water networks, contributing to a radical transformation of the traditional paradigm of water utilities. The paper collection in this SI includes different crucial topics such as the reliability, resilience, and performance of water networks, innovative demand management, and the novel challenge of real-time control and operation, along with their implications for cyber-security. The SI collected fourteen papers that provide a wide perspective of solutions, trends, and challenges in the contest of smart urban water networks. Some solutions have already been implemented in pilot sites (i.e., for water network partitioning, cyber-security, and water demand disaggregation and forecasting), while further investigations are required for other methods, e.g., the data-driven approaches for real time control. In all cases, a new deal between academia, industry, and governments must be embraced to start the new era of smart urban water systems

Innovative Concepts and Applications for Smart Water Cities

Smart cities are emerging worldwide, including economic, institutional, social, and technical concepts in interaction with existing infrastructure to achieve sustainability and increase quality of life. Additionally, digitalisation projects in the field of urban water infrastructure (UWI) aim to increase capacity of existing infrastructure to deal with future challenges caused by climate change, growing of urban population, and maintenance. Therefore, efficient and reliable information- and communication technologies (ICT) represent a key factor for the exchange of measurement data (e.g., monitoring environmental parameters) and interconnections between different participants. However, ICT and system-wide management are not yet widely deployed and mainly concentrated on main points in network-based UWI (e.g., combined sewer overflows, inlet point of district meter areas). In this context, especially the Internet of Things (IoT) concepts enables a large-scale implementation of measurement devices even at underground and remote structures, increasing data availability significantly. Following, new possibilities in the management of network-based UWI are emerging. The research aim of this doctoral dissertation is to contribute to the ongoing development of smart water cities by developing innovative concepts in the field of urban drainage and water distribution network including nature-based solutions

Coupled simulation of urban water networks and interconnected critical urban infrastructure systems: A systematic review and multi-sector research agenda

Adaptive planning of water infrastructure systems is crucial to bolster urban resilience in the face of climate change while meeting the needs of rapidly changing urban metabolisms. Urban water systems maintain intricate interconnections with other critical infrastructure domains (CIDs). Multi-sector dependencies and joint management of different CIDs have gained interest in recent research to mitigate undesired cascading effects across domains. Yet, combined modeling and joint simulation of multiple CIDs needs to overcome the limitations of tools and software often siloed to individual infrastructure domains. In this paper, we contribute a systematic review of 24 recent peer-reviewed publications on coupled simulation of urban water systems (water supply and drainage networks) and other CIDs, including energy grids, mobility networks, and IT infrastructure systems, extracted from a larger set of 222 publications. First, we identify trends, modeling frameworks, and simulation software enabling the combined simulation of interlinked CIDs. Then, we define an agenda of priorities for future research. Acknowledging the opportunities provided by open-source tools, data, and standardized evaluation schemes, future research fostering coupled simulation across CIDs should prioritize knowledge transfer, address differences in spatial and temporal dependencies, scale up simulations to a network level, and explore multi-sector interconnections beyond bilateral dependencies

Smart Water Infrastructures Laboratory: Reconfigurable Test-Beds for Research in Water Infrastructures Management

The smart water infrastructures laboratory is a research facility at Aalborg University, Denmark. The laboratory enables experimental research in control and management of water infrastructures in a realistic environment. The laboratory is designed as a modular system that can be configured to adapt the test-bed to the desired network. The water infrastructures recreated in this laboratory are district heating, drinking water supply, and waste water collection systems. This paper focuses on the first two types of infrastructure. In the scaled-down network the researchers can reproduce different scenarios that affect its management and validate new control strategies. This paper presents four study-cases where the laboratory is configured to represent specific water distribution and waste collection networks allowing the researcher to validate new management solutions in a safe environment. Thus, without the risk of affecting the consumers in a real network. The outcome of this research facilitates the sustainable deployment of new technology in real infrastructures

A differential game approach to urban drainage systems control

© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Urban drainage systems (UDSs) are complex large-scale systems that carry stormwater and wastewater throughout urban areas. During heavy rain scenarios, UDSs are not able to handle the amount of extra water that enters the network and flooding occurs. Usually, this might happen because the network is not being used efficiently, i.e., some structures remain underused while many others are overused. This paper proposes a control methology based on differential game theory that aims to efficiently use the existing network elements in order to minimize overflows and properly manage the water resource. The proposed controller is tested on a typical UDS and is compared with a centralized MPC achieving similar results in terms of flooding minimization and network usage, but only using local information on distributed controllers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Complexity aided design: The FuturICT technological innovation paradigm

"In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies-even our dreams ....What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel? How will we use its surges of sensation? For several years-maybe for a decade-there will be no central nervous system to manage this vast signaling network. Certainly there will be no central intelligence...some qualities of self-awareness will emerge once the Net is sensually enhanced. Sensuality is only one force pushing the Net toward intelligence”. These statements are quoted by an interview by Cherry Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Physics. It is interesting to outline the timeliness and highly predicting power of these statements. In particular, we would like to point to the relevance of the question "What will the earth's new skin permit us to feel?” to the work we are going to discuss in this paper. There are many additional compelling questions, as for example: "How can the electronic earth's skin be made more resilient?”; "How can the earth's electronic skin be improved to better satisfy the need of our society?”;"What can the science of complex systems contribute to this endeavour?” Graphical abstrac