Sweating the assets – the role of instrumentation, control and automation in urban water systems

Zhiguo Yuan, Gustaf Olsson, Rachel Cardell-Oliver, Kim van Schagen, Angela Marchi, Ana Deletic, Christian Urich, Wolfgang Rauch, Yanchen Liu, Guangming Jiang

Research output: Contribution to journalReview ArticleResearchpeer-review

85 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Instrumentation, control and automation (ICA) are currently applied throughout the urban water system at water treatment plants, in water distribution networks, in sewer networks, and at wastewater treatment plants. However, researchers and practitioners specialising in respective urban water sub-systems do not frequently interact, and in most cases to date the application of ICA has been achieved in silo. Here, we review start-of-the-art ICA throughout these sub-systems, and discuss the benefits achieved in terms of performance improvement, cost reduction, and more importantly, the enhanced capacity of the existing infrastructure to cope with increased service demand caused by population growth and continued urbanisation. We emphasise the importance of integrated control within each of the sub-systems, and also across the entire urban water system. System-wide ICA will have increasing importance with the growing complexity of the urban water environment in cities of the future.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)381-402
Number of pages22
JournalWater Research
Volume155
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 May 2019

Keywords

  • Distribution
  • ICA
  • IUWM
  • Sewer
  • Water supply
  • WWTP

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