The impact of bad sensors on the water industry and possible alternatives

Advanced monitoring of water quality in order to perform a real-time hazard analysis prior to Water Treatment Works (WTW) is more important nowadays, both to give warning of contamination and also to avoid downtime of the WTW. Downtimes could be a major contributor to risk. Any serious accident will cause a significant loss in customer and investor confidence. In this paper, two treatment plants (case studies) were examined. One was a groundwater WTW and the other a river WTW. The results showed that good correlations existed between the controlling parameters measured at the river WTW, but not at the Groundwater Treatment Works (GWTW), where there was a lack of good correlation between warning parameters. Results emphasised the value of backup monitoring and self-adjusting automation processes that are needed to counteract the rise in power costs. The study showed that a relationship between the different types of sensors and/or measured parameters can be deduced in order to cross-check the sensors performance and be used as a guide to when maintenance is really needed. Operating hierarchal procedures within the WTWs could also be used to cut costs, by improving condition monitoring. Both of the case studies highlighted the need for new non-invasive/remote sensors and some new investment in information technology infrastructure

The influence of vibration transducer mounting on the practical measurement of railway vibration

When assessing ground-borne vibration related to railways, careful consideration needs to be given to the mounting and coupling of the transducers. This paper presents the results of research investigating some of these fundamental issues. Different couplant materials and four of the most commonly used transducer-to-ground coupling techniques (spikes, buried, slabs, and the transducer directly plastered to the ground), were compared and analysed within the frequency range 5 Hz to 500 Hz. The data demonstrate that transducer vertical alignment has limited influence at small angles. “Blu-tack” showed to be an adequate couplant. Above 50 Hz coupling systems can influence the reading by up to 20 dB. Using the train as a source of vibration yields a high degree of non-linearity on the coupling systems performance

Procedures for estimating environmental impact from railway induced vibration: a review

Railway induced ground-borne vibration is among the most common and widespread sources of perceptible environmental vibration. It can give rise to discomfort and disturbance, adversely impacting on human activity and the operation of sensitive equipment. The rising demand for building new railway lines or upgrading existing lines in order to meet increasing transit flows has furthered the need for adequate vibration assessment tools during the planning and design stages. In recent years many studies in the fields of rail and ground dynamics have encouraged many prediction techniques giving rise to a wide variety of procedures for estimating vibration on buildings. Each method shows potential for application at different levels of complexity and applicability to varying circumstances. From the perspective of railway environmental impact assessment, this paper reviews some relevant prediction techniques, assessing their degree of suitability for practical engineering application by weighting their methodology (i.e. considerations and requirements) against practicality and precision. The review suggests that not all procedures are practicable (e.g. the attainment of representative parameters needed to run the procedures) whilst others predicate on assumptions which revealed to be too relaxed resulting in insufficient accuracy; however, a combination of methods may provide the necessary balance

Development of an Industry Foundation Classes Assembly Viewer

The construction industry has invested considerable effort into integration of project information in the last decade. One such effort is the definition of Industry Foundation Classes IFCs to facilitate data sharing across applications through a shared project model. In order to achieve the integration objectives, the industry software vendors need to commit to the implementation of IFC in their products. IFC is defined in EXPRESS, which is a platform-independent, object-flavored, data modeling language. The EXPRESS-based models must be translated into some programming language model for specific implementation. To achieve this, developers need to evaluate and select a suitable model and programming language for their implementation. Developers therefore need to understand both EXPRESS and a host of programming languages. This initial knowledge requirement may hinder the take-off or adoption of IFC-based implementation. This paper describes a software solution that reduces this initial knowledge requirement considerably by providing a .NET class library translation and an implementation view of the IFC model, based on the EXPRESS definitions. Complemented by the online documentation provided with the IFC definitions, the software provides a hierarchical view of the IFC-based programming objects with drill-down facility for developers to capture and appreciate the information requirement for specific objects