I-Real (member Water Alliance) BV joins Smart City Dordrecht program with its RealM2M software system to monitor water levels in the sewer system. Han van Eijnsbergen, manager of ground water with the Municipality of Dordrecht, describes a situation in which the RealSense 10 loggers of I-Real were used and whose data becomes visible in RealM2M. The Municipality of Dordrecht has big ambitions with regard to sustainability, mobility, health care, safety and the economy. To achieve these, several months ago the ‘Smart City Dordrecht’ program was launched. The pilot for traffic management using I-Real’s software system RealM2M to control several traffic control systems is a good example.
Measures
Residents from a street in the Municipality of Dordrecht were getting ´wet feet´ because they live in a dip. “The sewers here meet all the standards. But as the Municipal Council, we can’t leave it at that, particularly not when people are having problems. To prevent flooded basements, we took extra measures.” In order to relieve the local sewer system, the rain water was separated from the waste water. “Normally, the water resulting from a heavy downpour flows from the sewer into a storage and settlement basin. Then, if the capacity of the sewer allows it, the water is pumped back into the sewer. In this situation, however, the clean rain water from a shower is separated from the sewer water and stored in the settling basin. Because there is nowhere for the rain water to go, after the shower the rain water flows back into the sewer”, Van Eijnsbergen explains.
Overlap
In order to monitor whether rain water is actually flowing into the facility and how much, the Municipality asked I-Real to install a RealSense 10 logger. Every 5 minutes, the logger measures the level in the basin. The data from the logger is automatically displayed in RealM2M. This might seem a strange combination: traffic objects (traffic control systems) and water objects (level measurements) in one system, but there is a lot of synergy. “In both cases, it’s about optimally using the existing capacity of the infrastructural system. And in view of climate changes, rapid information exchange can limit problems in the public space. The fact that the data from several traffic control systems in the Municipality and the level measurement are visible in the same system says a lot”, says Arjen Visser, account manager Water at I-Real and contact person for Dordrecht’s water project.
Smart City Dordrecht
Visser recognises the increasing importance of connecting the various work fields in the public space: “The Municipality of Dordrecht is emphasising this concept by launching the ‘Smart City Dordrecht’ programme. Smart systems and infrastructure must contribute to an energy-neutral municipality with a good quality of life. We see more and more Municipalities starting to prepare for the ‘connected future’.”
