SMaRT-OnlineWDN – Early warning and safety management system for water suppliers

Short description of the project

Early warning and safety management system for water utilities   

Water supply networks are exposed to a constant threat by deliberate or accidental contamination. This is the reason why the existing drinking water ordinance forces to arrange regular sampling concerning diverse bacteria and chemical substances. However, the existing procedures by examinations in special laboratories are very timeconsuming.

An early warning and security management system is helpful to enable the water providers to take fast and efficient countermeasures. The development of such an early warning and security management system is subject of the current German-French project SMaRT-Online^WDN.

For the protection of the health and safety of the public the water suppliers are mainly interested in tools answering the following questions: Where is the source of the contamination? Which effects (spread, concentration) are to be expected? Which measures are necessary for the stop of the damage?

Project goals

The goals of SMaRT-Online^WDN are:

1. To optimally place suitable sensors for the safe detection of contaminations in drinking water in the distribution network
2. To report reliably a contamination by an alarm generation module
3. In the case of an alarm to localize the source of contamination by a continuous online simulation model as well as
4. To use "look-ahead-simulations" as decision support for countermeasures

The basis of SMaRT-Online^WDN is a simulation model operated online covering the actual operating status of the whole distribution network nearly in real time.