AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage supports the operations of Singapore’s drainage system
Singapore is a highly urbanised city state with a land size of 728 km2. Situated in Southeast Asia and near the equator, the island nation generally experiences a hot and humid weather with an abundance of rainfall all year round. These attributes pose two major challenges for Singapore, which are managing limited storage capacity of fresh water sources to supply its residents and dealing with flash floods that can occur because of heavy rainfall. PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, has a holistic approach to solving these unique challenges by adopting smart digital solutions.
The mission
Dams have been built at major river mouths to mitigate flood risk and at the same time convert the rivers into rainwater storage facilities that can also be used by the city for water supply. The Marina Barrage, which commenced operations in 2008, is one of these dams.
In 2015, SUEZ and PUB began the collaboration to develop a digital platform,as part of the Smart PUB Roadmap to meet Singapore’s future water needs and optimise its water resources management through digitalisation. The digital platform, known as the Catchment and Waterways Operations System (CWOS) is based on SUEZ’s AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage. It is intended to serve as a decision support system for operators to manage the drainage system and tidal gates, monitor water quality, optimise reservoir operations and enhance PUB’s response to flash floods. The platform was first piloted in the Marina Catchment and was well-received by its users for its insightful dashboards, intuitive interfaces and operational advisory for informed decision-making.
Following the successful pilot, the current phase of the project, which started in August 2019,endeavours to expand the CWOS to cover the other catchments.
Our solution
AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage
AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage is a real-time software solution developed by SUEZ as a digital tool for operators to monitor the drainage and sewerage system, flood management and protect the environment from pollution caused by combined sewer overflow (CSO). The solution addresses the problems at 3 levels: monitoring, anticipation and dynamic control.
In this collaboration with PUB, SUEZ helps the city state to achieve its flood and efficient water resources management goals by applying its AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage solution for CWOS across the entire island. The system provides PUB operators with a real-time situational awareness using weather information and field sensor data in the network. By analysing these data, the system anticipates water levels and flows within the stormwater network and provides decision support to PUB.
SUEZ works with three user groups within PUBto help with day-to-day operations viaAQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage:
Drainage Operations
Monitoring of rain eventsby integration of various sensors and radars into one single platform to give a holistic view of the situation on ground
Anticipation of flash floods using hydraulic models, data driven models (machine learning & deep learning), etc to optimise PUB’s flood response
Reservoir Management
Monitoring of rain, water levels, transfers, gate operations, etc. to give a complete view of all relevant information in one dashboard
Anticipation of floods using hydraulic models whichprovide operators with knowledge of the incoming flow to reservoirs andallow comparison with prevailing tidal conditionsto optimise operations
Dynamic control via real-time strategies proposal to operators advising on tidal gates and pumps operation. Operators make the final decision on operations with decision support provided by CWOS.
Water Quality
Monitoring of water quality sensors and lab data across Singapore through monitoring dashboard
Anticipation of water quality issues within reservoirs and waterways using water quality models, data driven models (geospatial mapping) and mass balance model
- AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage system offers meaningful insights on flash floods and assist users in the optimisation of water storage within reservoirs.
- Continuous improvements to the system are being made based on user feedback and additional innovative features such as water quality forecasting will be incorporated.
- PUB has rolled out the CWOS, which is based on AQUADVANCED® Urban Drainage system, to enhance its water and flood management capabilities across Singapore.
