HS5.2.3
Water resources policy and management: digital water and interconnected urban infrastructure
Convener: Riccardo Taormina | Co-conveners: Andrea Cominola, Elisabeth KruegerECSECS, Ana MijicECSECS, David Steffelbauer
Displays
| Attendance Mon, 04 May, 16:15–18:00 (CEST)

Water utilities and municipalities must embrace technological innovation to address the exacerbating challenges and uncertainty posed by climate change, urbanization, and population. The progressive digitalization of urban water infrastructure, and the adoption of IoT solutions for water resources, are opening new opportunities for the design, planning, and management of more sustainable and resilient urban water networks and systems. At the same time, the “digital water” revolution is strengthening the interconnection between urban water systems and other critical infrastructure (e.g., energy grids, transportation networks) motivating the development of novel approaches accounting for the intrinsic complexity of such coupled systems. This session aims to provide an active forum to discuss and exchange knowledge on state-of-the-art and emerging tools, framework, and methodologies for planning and management of modern urban water infrastructure, with a focus on digitalization and/or interconnection with other systems. Topics and applications could belong to any area of urban water demand and supply network analysis, modelling and management, including intelligent sensors and advanced metering, novel applications of IoT for urban water, and challenges to their implementation or risk of lock-in of rigid system designs. Additional topics may include big-data analysis and information retrieval, data-driven behavioural analysis, descriptive and predictive models of water demand, experimental approaches to demand management, water demand and supply optimization, trend and anomaly (e.g., leak) identification. Examples of interesting investigations on interconnected systems include cyber-physical security of urban water systems (i.e., communication infrastructure), combined reliability studies on power-to-water networks (energy), and minimization of impacts of urban flooding on traffic (transportation).