Sweating the assets - The role of instrumentation, control and automation in urban water systems

Zhiguo Yuan; Gustaf Olsson; Rachel Cardell-Oliver; Kim van Schagen; Angela Marchi; Ana Deletic; Christian Urich; Wolfgang Rauch; Yanchen Liu; Guangming Jiang

doi:10.1016/j.watres.2019.02.034

Sweating the assets - The role of instrumentation, control and automation in urban water systems

Water Res. 2019 May 15:155:381-402. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2019.02.034. Epub 2019 Mar 3.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, QLD, 4072, Australia; CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, PO Box 8000, VIC, 3800, Australia. Electronic address: z.yuan@awmc.uq.edu.au.
² Industrial Automation, IEA, Lund University, Sweden; CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, PO Box 8000, VIC, 3800, Australia. Electronic address: gustaf.olsson@iea.lth.se.
³ School of Computer Science & Software Engineering, The University of Western Australia, WA, 6009, Australia; CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, PO Box 8000, VIC, 3800, Australia.
⁴ Royal HaskoningDHV, PO Box 1132, 3800 BC, Amersfoort, the Netherlands.
⁵ School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia; CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, PO Box 8000, VIC, 3800, Australia.
⁶ Civil Engineering Department, Monash Water for Liveability, Monash University, VIC, 3800, Australia; CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, PO Box 8000, VIC, 3800, Australia.
⁷ Institute of Infrastructure Engineering, University Innsbruck, A-6020, Innsbruck, Austria; CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, PO Box 8000, VIC, 3800, Australia.
⁸ School of Environment, Tsinghua University, 100083, Beijing, China.
⁹ Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, QLD, 4072, Australia; School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering, University of Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia.

PMID: 30861379
DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2019.02.034

Abstract

Instrumentation, control and automation (ICA) are currently applied throughout the urban water system at water treatment plants, in water distribution networks, in sewer networks, and at wastewater treatment plants. However, researchers and practitioners specialising in respective urban water sub-systems do not frequently interact, and in most cases to date the application of ICA has been achieved in silo. Here, we review start-of-the-art ICA throughout these sub-systems, and discuss the benefits achieved in terms of performance improvement, cost reduction, and more importantly, the enhanced capacity of the existing infrastructure to cope with increased service demand caused by population growth and continued urbanisation. We emphasise the importance of integrated control within each of the sub-systems, and also across the entire urban water system. System-wide ICA will have increasing importance with the growing complexity of the urban water environment in cities of the future.

Keywords: Distribution; ICA; IUWM; Sewer; WWTP; Water supply.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Automation
Cities
Sweating*
Waste Disposal, Fluid
Wastewater
Water Supply
Water*

Substances

Waste Water
Water