Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | MAY 2022 | 37 million people – depend on them. Given London's population is estimated to increase to 16 million by 2160, the capital's Victorian pipes are due an urgent upgrade. As such, work to dig the Thames Tideway Tunnel – or "Super Sewer" as it is commonly known – will complete in 2022, with connec- tion and testing due to complete by 2025. Roughly 25km long, and 7.2m in diam- eter, the Tideway project aims to protect the Thames from pollution events for at least the next 100 years. It will see sewage treatment works upgraded and an additional 1.6 mil- lion cubic metres of storage created across the Tideway Tunnel and the 7km Lee Tunnel. The project harnesses technology to digi- talise and automate wastewater network systems to reduce pollution of the Thames – upgrading a sewer network built in the late 1800s, according to Peter Vale, engineering information manager at Thames Tideway. Ultimately, Vale explains that connecting different data environments together across treatment works, networks and Tideway Tunnels will lead to better decision making and cost efficiencies. Bath's intelligent sewer Less than two years aŽer a successful trial on Bath's wastewater network, Wessex Water has committed to a network-wide rollout of StormHarvester's Intelligent Sewer Suite in what's been described as the most extensive artificial intelligence (AI) deployment in any wastewater network in the world – covering 35,000km of pipes. The blockage detection collaboration sees Wessex Water and StormHarvester use hyper-local rainfall forecasting – historic sewer level data and rainfall levels from 1.5km squared grids around sensored assets – to accurately predict flooding events at wastewater infrastructure such as pipes, pumps and combined sewer overflows six hours ahead. The project, which was named Most Inno- vative New Technology at the 2021 Water Industry Award and a finalist in the 2021 Util- ity Week Awards' Innovation of the Year cat- egory, was initially deployed across the city of Bath's wastewater catchment, comprising approximately 3,500km of sewers and span- ning 98 sensored assets – 89 of which were at combined sewer overflows. From June to August 2020, Storm- Harvester's Intelligent Sewer Suite provided real-time level predictions and alerts on early blockage formations for the city's sewage network and identified potential pollution events before they occurred so that mainte- nance teams could act before they resulted in failures. According to Wessex Water, the trial saw tens of millions of machine learning calcula- tions undertaken to gauge sewer asset behav- iour in both dry and wet weather periods. On top of this, while Wessex's previous alarm system generated 4,500 alarms during the trial period, StormHarvester's digital tools muted alerts where high sewer levels were predicted by the AI soŽware due to rainfall, thereby reducing the total by 97% to 138. Glasgow's 'Smart Canal' Glasgow's population more than trebled during the Victorian era, which saw the city establish itself as a hub for heavy engineer- ing such as ship building. More than a century later, Glasgow's watercourses are still facilitating innova- tion in the form of Europe's first ever "smart canal" – a £17 million collaboration between Glasgow City Council, Scottish Water and Scottish Canals, which scooped the Sustaina- ble Drainage & Flood Management Initiative of the Year prize at the 2021 Water Industry Awards. Officially named the North Glasgow Integrated Water Management System, the project arms the 250-year-old Forth & Clyde Canal with modern century technology to both mitigate flood risk and make space for more than 3,000 new homes in north Glasgow. Under an initial 60-year service agree- ment, the surface water drainage system will use sensors and weather forecasting technol- ogy to provide early warning of wet weather and move excess rainfall into stretches of canal where water levels have been lowered. This will create 55,000 cubic metres of extra capacity for floodwater – equivalent to 22 Olympic swimming pools – and open new areas for regeneration. According to James Murray, Metropolitan Glasgow Strategy Drainage Partnership man- ager at Glasgow City Council, collaborative continued overleaf Above and right: National Grid going the extra mile for securing the electricty network Thames Tideway's 'Super Sewer' will drastically reduce sewage overflows into the River Thames Photo: Mott MacDonald Photo: Thames Tideway

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