Cloud and rain clouds: a good combination for dry feet

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This week I visited the Cloud World Forum in London where the Dutch Digital Delta project was again nominated as finalist for a prestigious award, showcasing that Cloud is truly stimulating innovation in all sectors and industries.

By Bram Havers

Changing weather conditions have seriously impacted European cities over the last 2 years alone. Who doesn´t remember the situation in the Balkan region that has seen the worst floods in over 120 years. Earlier this year, England saw double the normal monthly rainfall, leading to serious water management issues in large parts of the country. The European Environment Agency lists more than 175 major floods over the last 10 years and predicts that flooding and other severe weather conditions will only continue to increase due to climate change.

Water sectors in countries around the world are facing huge challenges due to this changing weather patterns. Extreme rainfall results in more flooding, whereas droughts are degrading the strength of the flood prevention infrastructure, such as drying out of levees. The damages of flooding escalates even further due to increasing urbanization, especially in delta regions. The Netherlands, being a country for 55% prone to flooding from rivers and sea need to take action. The Dutch government therefore plans to increase flood safety levels and fresh drinking water supplies, adding €1 – 2 billion to the current €5 billion annual investments.

The government and city leaders are turning to smart solutions to reduce the increasing costs of water management. Many initiatives have started. Dikes, sewer systems and rivers for example are being monitored with the help of sensors and satellite technology, delivering better insight in the true status of the infrastructure to better focus on maintenance and pro-actively take measures that will save costs.

The problem is that most of these innovations and water management information systems work in isolation and make little re-use of the experience and available systems. A major obstacle that many governmental organizations and businesses identified is the inability to find and access data from these various systems. It takes up to 30% of project resources to reuse data; and often the data is provided with no delivery assurances. This makes it difficult to use these new systems as a basis for more efficient business process that should drive cost reductions.

In the Netherlands, the Water Management Agency Rijkswaterstaat decided to partner with several public and private sector organizations to pilot a research program called Digital Delta. The program focuses on using open data to improve information sharing and insight among agencies and research institutions that focus on water management.

At the heart of the Digital Delta information-sharing and analytics solution is the IBM Intelligent Water on Cloud platform, a software as a service (SaaS) offering hosted on IBM Softlayer that will provide water experts with a real-time intelligent dashboard to harness information so it can be shared immediately across organizations and agencies. The partners and IBM Global Business Consultancy Services implemented six use cases on the platform that used information exchange to gain better insight.

These insights can help prepare for imminent difficulties, enabling authorities to coordinate and manage response efforts and to enhance the ongoing efficiency of overall water management. With better integrated information, water authorities will be able to improve safety and stimulate innovation while reducing the cost of managing water. The objective of the Digital Delta program is to save up to 15 percent of the annual addition investment; resulting in savings of up to € 200-300 million annually.

Government, water and city leaders from around the world have already shown interest in the Digital Delta program that can easily be replicated and implemented wherever water causes serious problems.