Overview
“Aigües de Manresa”, a public water management company near Barcelona, Spain, serves 17 municipalities for a total of around 150.000 inhabitants (2022). The company manages a 1400 km water network, 127 tanks and 12 drinking water treatment plants, as well as a 400 km wastewater network and 18 wastewater treatment plants. To improve the efficiency of its water cycle management, the company secured funding from the Next Generation EU funds under the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan (PRTR). This project, benefiting all 17 municipalities, was selected as one of 30 out of 158 submissions in the first call for the PERTE (Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation) for Water Digitization. The project's scope includes using open-source and non-licensed hardware, providing replicable solutions across the water management sector.
Objectives
The primary objectives of this project are:
1. To integrate and improve open-source GIS tools and IoT technologies for comprehensive water resource management.
2. To develop a scalable, cost-effective platform for data visualization, analysis, and decision support.
3. To replace existing SCADA systems with open-source alternatives and incorporate IoT databases.
Methods
The implementation strategy includes:
1. Existing Tools: Utilizing QGIS Desktop and the Giswater plugin for inventory management and automatic generation of hydraulic models integrated with Epanet and SWMM.
2. SCADA and Telecontrol Replacement: Replacing SCADA with a new open-source SCADA system and Telecontrol using non-licensed hardware.
3. IoT Integration: Creating an IoT database to manage data from various sensors and devices, supporting advanced data analytics.
4. OGC SensorThings API: Incorporating the OGC Standard SensorThings API by using FROST to facilitate seamless integration and management of sensor data.
5. Hydraulic Algorithms: Incorporating new hydraulic algorithms for Epanet. through Qgis Plugin Giswater to improve system modeling and performance.
6. Web Client: Using QGIS Web Client 2 (QWC2) for web-based data visualization and interaction.
7. Custom Plugins: Developing customized services and specific plugins to extend QWC2 functionalities with the ones provided by Giswater to view inventory and hydraulic model data and interact with the data; for another hand there is a proposal for a new QWC2 plugin for visualizing the data provided by the Sensorthings Api server.
Conclusions
The integration of open-source GIS and IoT technologies under the PERTE project will significantly improve the water resource management capabilities of “Aigües de Manresa”. This project demonstrates the practical benefits of using open-source solutions in utility management, promoting sustainability and cost-efficiency. By using these technologies, “Aigües de Manresa” sets a standard for other water utilities, showing the potential for widespread adoption and replication of these solutions.