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| The installation of a sensor at Ellsworth Pond. |
At the recent Great Lakes Adaptation Forum
held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Oct. 5-7, 2016, I heard about an exciting new
approach to managing stormwater runoff using remote sensing technology, called
the “internet of water,” or “intelligent stormwater grids.” The presentation
was about how data-gathering gadgets were installed this past summer around the
catchment area of a pond in Ann Arbor by members of the University of
Michigan’s Real Time Water Systems Lab,
led by engineer Branko Kerkez. I believe I was the only current California
resident in the room, so I might have been alone in having a lightbulb go on
over my head as I listened to the description of the installations,
anticipating Kerkez bringing up the possible applications of this technology
for capturing the Los Angeles River runoff that infamously goes straight into
the ocean. That water could, if captured and treated, provide the city with all
the water it needs, relieving demand on Northern California’s water resources,
which depend largely on meltwater from the Sierra snowpack, which is expected
to disappear with climate change. It turns out Kerkez previously helped develop
real-time remote
monitoring of Sierra snowmelt as part of a UC Berkeley research
team. California’s drought appears to be one of the initial inspirations for
his remote sensing experiments (read more about his earlier work in
California here).
This short video from Aug.
5, 2016, describes how the internet of water as developed by
Kerkez’s lab might help Los Angeles. With the real-time water management
technology, “you can strategically hold back certain portions of [runoff] water
and potentially even reuse it,” says Kerkez in the video. By making aging
infrastructure responsive to an influx of stormwater you could not only harness
the water for other uses but possibly avert a flood by moving water to a less
inundated neighborhood.
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| Still from 2016 video "Building the Internet of Water." Sensor installation. |
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| Still from 2016 video "Building the Internet of Water." Remote readout. |
On Oct. 1, 2016, California officially entered its sixth
year of drought. The Sacramento Bee reported on
Sept. 30, that forecasters are predicting “it’s going to take a long
time before anyone declares California’s drought over.” Southern California is looking
like it will continue to be particularly dry.
Some LA River stormwater runoff is already being captured
and used to recharge groundwater, but the LA Department of Water and Power is
looking to step up those efforts significantly and introduce direct reuse of
runoff with a Stormwater
Capture Master Plan, now in its third year of development. Read
a PowerPoint from the Plan’s final public hearing in June 2015
describing its scope and ambitions. What the internet of water offers will not
revolutionize this project, but it could make the project much more effective.
The goal of the Ann Arbor pilot presently is to demonstrate
real-time adaptive management for stormwater. The remote sensing instruments
deliver to the internet measurements of the flow in open channels, soil
moisture, rainfall, and water quality. Microcontrollers and wireless
communication detect and transmit the information at a one-minute resolution. For
the demonstration project, ten devices were deployed within a three-square-mile
catchment called Ellsworth Pond, selected because the county allowed the team
access to it. At this stage, the technology is relatively inexpensive, using data
analysis algorithms and hardware platforms custom-made in Kerkez’s lab.
Some of the barriers to using these devices for management that
were discussed at the GLAF presentation are the challenges of identifying and
reducing errors in the data, and vandalism of the instruments. So far the lab
has not had to deal with the latter problem, but it may arise as more
instruments are installed in more densely populated areas. Also, a May 2016 article
in Environmental Science and Technology (Kerkez et al.) states that the
research on how to create a smarter stormwater system is not limited by
technology, but “rather by a much more fundamental need to understand the
complex spatiotemporal dynamics that govern water flow and quality across large
urban areas.”
Before moving on to helping solve Los Angeles’ stormwater
runoff problems, these water management gadgets will be piloted further in Ann
Arbor, Toledo, Milwaukee, and Fort Worth-Dallas, using real-time data from the
water system to paint a better picture of how stormwater behaves and how we
might use it more wisely.
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Learn more about the smarter stormwater management pilot
projects by the University of Michigan’s Real Time Water Systems Lab:
- Open Storm, the Real Time Water Systems Lab's "smart" water system project web site: http://open-storm.org/
- Kerkez’s bibliography of articles on “smart” water systems: http://open-storm.org/read/
- Check out the lab’s DIY instructions for “simple-to-assemble controllers” you can attach to ponds, rain barrels, green roofs & etc. to control the flow of stormwater before and during storms: http://open-storm.org/procedure/control/
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