Digitalisation and citizen participation - opportunities for integrated management of urban water infrastructure

In the field of urban water infrastructure (UWI), a system-wide management, that interacts with other infrastructure areas, is gaining importance. Additionally, new technologies based on the Internet of Things (IoT) concept, as part of smart city development, are rapidly emerging. This allows for new possibilities in the management of UWI. However, in literature, there is a lack of information about usable communication technology making it challenging to reproduce existing research.

To contribute to this ongoing development, the results of a detailed literature review are presented focusing on (smart) applications related to network-based UWI. Therefore, existing, and new applications of urban drainage and water distribution - including nature-based solutions - are analysed to provide a comprehensive analysis over required spatial and temporal resolution of measurement and control data for a cross-system view. To close the knowledge gap between UWI applications and usable (IoT) communication technology, a detailed framework is presented to identify suitable communication technologies based on spatial and temporal requirements for smart UWI operation. This framework can be used by researchers and stakeholders to choose a suitable communication technology based on their intended UWI applications, or vice versa, to indicate UWI applications, which are possible with an existing communication network.

The intersections with basic conditions of data communication (e.g., transmission range, data rate, reliability) reveal, that small-scale system parts (e.g., IoT-based micro storages, nature-based solutions) can be integrated into an overall controlled system by using state-of-the-art IoT technology in combination with citizen participation. However, monitoring and controlling networks in the field of UWI are based on battery-powered measurement devices due to underground and remote installation sites, and requires investment costs, too. Consequently, a balance between measurement equipment and effectiveness of the implemented applications is required to achieve economic and ecological sustainability