The Internet of Water Flanders enables multi-stakeholder smart water management

Monitoring the quality of our water resources is essential if we want to make the transition towards smart water management, which will enable us to better adapt to climate change and create smart water systems for cities and regions. The deployment of IoT technologies, using a wireless network of compact, cost-effective and low-power fluid sensors, enables the collection of indicators of water quality data on a large scale and in real time. The government of Flanders has brought together key partners to build a pilot for such an Internet of Water (IoW) that will be scalable for use in other world regions. A characteristic feature of the Internet of Water Flanders project is its full-stack approach. The aim is to build a network of 2500 wireless fluid sensors that permanently measure aspects of the quality of surface water, groundwater and treated domestic wastewater. The dense network of sensors with high temporal resolution will provide unprecedented volumes of data. The sensor measurements are combined with other existing data sources and processed on a cloud data platform. Machine learning algorithms and models will analyse and visualize the data stream, and make predictions of future evolutions (e.g., the coupling of neural network and data assimilation schemes for water quality forecasting). Water management authorities and utilities can rely on these insights to take short- and long-term actions to address challenges such as salt water intrusion in coastal areas, drought planning and water quality management or the impact of sewer overflows or industrial discharges in surface water. The setup of the IoW and the first test results with a small pilot network of sensors will be presented during this talk.