Advancing Urban Flood Resilience With Smart Water Infrastructure

Advances in wireless communications and low-power electronics are enabling a new generation of smart water systems that will employ real-time sensing and control to solve our most pressing water challenges. In a future characterized by these systems, networks of sensors will detect and communicate flood events at the neighborhood scale to improve disaster response. Meanwhile, wirelessly-controlled valves and pumps will coordinate reservoir releases to halt combined sewer overflows and restore water quality in urban streams. While these technologies promise to transform the field of water resources engineering, considerable knowledge gaps remain with regards to how smart water systems should be designed and operated. This dissertation presents foundational work towards building the smart water systems of the future, with a particular focus on applications to urban flooding. First, I introduce a first-of-its-kind embedded platform for real-time sensing and control of stormwater systems that will enable emergency managers to detect and respond to urban flood events in real-time. Next, I introduce new methods for hydrologic data assimilation that will enable real-time geolocation of floods and water quality hazards. Finally, I present theoretical contributions to the problem of controller placement in hydraulic networks that will help guide the design of future decentralized flood control systems. Taken together, these contributions pave the way for adaptive stormwater infrastructure that will mitigate the impacts of urban flooding through real-time response.PHDCivil EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163144/1/mdbartos_1.pd

Optimal Design of a Rain Gauge Network to Improve Streamflow Forecasting

Enhanced streamflow forecasting has always been an important task for researchers and water resources managers. However, streamflow forecasting is often challenging owing to the complexity of hydrologic systems. The accuracy of streamflow forecasting mainly depends on the input data, especially rainfall as it constitutes the key input in transforming rainfall into runoff. This emphasizes the need for incorporating accurate rainfall input in streamflow forecasting models in order to achieve enhanced streamflow forecasting. Based on past research, it is well-known that an optimal rain gauge network is necessary to provide high quality rainfall estimates. Therefore, this study focused on the optimal design of a rain gauge network and integration of the optimal network-based rainfall input in artificial neural network (ANN) models to enhance the accuracy of streamflow forecasting. The Middle Yarra River catchment in Victoria, Australia was selected as the case study catchment, since the management of water resources in the catchment is of great importance to the majority of Victorians