Internet of Water - Great Lakes Innovation

Rethinking H2O

What if we could make our existing infrastructure talk to each other to make our communities more resilient? Faced with a water challenges, a few PHD students from the University of Michigan set out to harness data to solve some of the Great Lakes water challenges. In this podcast, you will hear from Sara Troutman and Gregory Ewing to learn more about how this project came to life.

In 2018 the Water Environment Foundation opened up the LIFT intelligent water systems challenge to rethink the water problem in the Great Lakes region. Due to many stressors in the Great Lakes region, such as aging infrastructure, changing populations, and rapid development, the sewer and storm water conveyance system is strained well beyond its design. As a result, the combined sewer system experiences untreated combined sewer overflows.

To combat these persistent untreated outflows, the University of Michigan team engineered a plan to use real-time sensor feeds to control valves, pumps and gates in the existing system, which dynamically reconfigure themselves to changing inputs. Their winning LIFT Challenge submission lays out an algorithm that can be applied to Great Lake Water Authority system and that is accompanied by a real-time dashboard and decision support tool for operators.

The web-based decision-support dashboard is a key innovation, giving real-time readouts of measurements from across the storm water system and also providing control recommendations to the user as determined by the market-based control algorithm.

Through data and testing, they were able to show that there is a significant opportunity for GLWA to use its current system (sensors, storage basins, pumps, etc.) to maximize storage and reduce combined sewer overflows.

To follow the ongoing program, please visit http://open-storm.org/

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