Thammasat University students interested in urban planning, technological innovation, government, management, political science, social science, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 15 September online Interdisciplinary Forum on Smart Water Cities.

The Zoom event, on Thursday, 15 September 2022 at 3pm Bangkok time, is organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong (HKU).

Students may access many publications about smart water cities by using the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.

Speakers at the event will be Dr. Monica Garcia Quesada, Coordinator of “Smart Water Cities” project, International Water Resources Association and Mr. Sung-Phil Jang, Senior Manager, K-Water Research Institute, South Korea.

Discussants will include Mr. Kwok-Tai Chan, Team Leader/System Modelling, Water Supplies Department, The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR); and Professor James Nickum, Editor-in-chief, Water International.

The moderator will be Dr. Frederick Lee, Executive Director of the Centre for Water Technology and Policy, HKU.

As the event description posted online explains:

Event Detail

The Inter-disciplinary Forum, co-organized by the Centre and the Water Supplies Department of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is designed to promote an exchange of innovative ideas among practitioners, policy-makers and research scientists on salient policy-technology interface issues in the urban water sector.

Students are invited to register at this link:

https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=83392

With any questions or for further information, please write to

yuhwong@hku.hk

High level smart water monitoring technology can ensure that water quality remains adequate. This prevents contamination, which is especially useful in our time of pandemics. With continuous smart online water monitoring systems, potential issues can be observed and dealt with promptly.

Enhancing water management allows urban centers to fit water systems with smart sensing equipment. In this way, leaks can be detected and engineers informed about problems quickly. This reduces waste and optimizes water storage and distribution.

Smart water cities are good for the environment in terms of conservation and climate change. The role that water systems play in urban management regularly goes underestimated, but they are thought to be responsible for up to half of the total energy consumption of a municipal authority. As such, optimizing the use of that energy is a resource for minimizing energy use and reducing emissions.

Smart water cities can also better manage storm drain overflows and urban run-off, which can cause flooding and compromise the quality of water bodies. An interconnected system can give advance warning to local authorities, who may issue alerts to residents of affected areas and reroute traffic. This would minimize damage from extreme weather events which are likely to occur more often with climate change.

In January a research article was published in Sustainable Cities and Society, Towards a smart water city: A comprehensive review of applications, data requirements, and communication technologies for integrated management.

Here is the article’s abstract:

Smart cities are an innovate concept for managing urban cities to enhance sustainability and increase quality of life for citizens. Although urban water infrastructure (UWI) performs important functions in a city (e.g., supply of drinking water), information and communication technologies (ICT) and system-wide management of network-based UWI are not yet widely deployed. Therefore, this review summarises first both existing and potential applications related to network-based UWI, characterised by different spatial and temporal resolution of measurement and control data. Second, a comprehensive analysis of ICT is provided, which is extended with exemplary applications in the field. The analysis reveals that a coordination between intended application and usable communication technology is required to realise an efficient monitoring and control network in the field of UWI networks. To overcome this limitation, a detailed framework is developed, which can be used by researcher, network operators, and stakeholder to identify suitable communication technologies for different UWI applications or to determine possible applications for an existing ICT system. Following, the applicability of the framework is demonstrated by selected examples. As the framework also indicates, an integrated approach towards smart water cities requires the combination of different communication technologies to satisfy all specifications.

In July, another article appeared, Innovative Roadmap for Smart Water Cities: A Global Perspective.

Here is its abstract:

Globally, cities are feeling the effects of climate change: rising temperatures, droughts, heatwaves, and more extreme storms are impacting water quantity and water quality. Roughly half of the world’s population are now living in cities. By the year 2050, that figure is anticipated to rise to as much as 80 per cent. If we want our cities to be sustainable both locally and globally, we need to make sure that we use fewer natural resources and generate less trash. The built environment of a smart city incorporates digital, human, and physical components. It is critical to discover appropriate assessment procedures given the rapid urbanization and wide-ranging innovations. Due to impending scarcity, we must move now to increase water treatment and distribution efficiency while decreasing consumption. Risk assessment, mitigation, warning, and forecasting are all critical components of flood risk management going forward. Institutional and governance measures are also important. By providing fresh insights, this research contributes to the corpus of knowledge on smart city mobility. A smart water city improves the quality of life of citizens by solving existing urban water problems based on various technologies and ICT technologies throughout the urban water cycle. It not only provides individual solutions for conventional water management, such as drainage, water treatment, and wastewater treatment, but also improves comprehensive water management through the restoration of the urban water cycle, waterfront usage, and intelligent water management. Furthermore, in a smart water city, ICT-based intelligent technologies complement and improve existing infrastructure and technologies for water management within the whole urban system. They are a supportive tool for the different functions of water in urban settings. This understanding highlights that smart water cities concern not only the provision of drinking water and sanitation services for urban water users, but also other urban water functions such as urban water restoration, waterfront usage, and integrated water management. This paper examined the use of integrated, real-time information and ICT solutions, such as sensors, monitors, geographic information system (GIS), satellite mapping, and other contactless, intelligent tools in both urban and agriculture water management. The paper presents evidence of how SWM has provided solutions at different scales and across various urban and rural contexts, and how they have impacted the social, economic, environmental, governance, and technological spheres.

Last year, Bloomberg News reported on How to Build a Water-Smart City:

As water shortages and drought become increasingly common, cities will need to invest in infrastructure and find ways to recycle their supply.

Smart Water Magazine is another periodical covering the subject matter.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)