SMART MANAGEMENT OF THE WATER URBAN CYCLE

Aguas Municipalizadas de Alicante, AMAEM, is the company in charge of managing the urban water cycle in Alicante and several neighbour towns: San Vicente, Sant Joan, Petrer, Monforte and El Campello. More specifically, AMAEM provides the water distribution service in all of them, and is responsible for the sewage service in Alicante, Sant Joan and Monforte. The population served amounts to 750,000 inhabitants, supplied by a 2,000 km water distribution network and 700 km of sewage drains. AMAEM is a public-private-partnership shared by the town council (50%) and the AGBAR Group (50%). AMAEM is an example of successful PPP for the World Bank.

The company develops and makes intensive use of available ICT solutions to run the services and to optimize its assets with partners such as Aqualogy or Ondeo Systems in an environment where traditional strategies prevail. This stake in added value technologies is reflected in the involvement of the Company in the @qua consortium. We shall briefly describe some of the projects developed and implemented by AMAEM for the management of the Urban Water Cycle, classified in four lines

Public Administration Smart Synergies

• iCAP: Online System for Water Quality Control in extensive Regional Networks
• SIPAID: Smart Flood Early Response Management: Integrated System for flood prevention, decision making speeding-up for all the actors concerned

Smart Citizen Information:

• Spot Billing: Onsite instant billing to guarantee the client access to the complete invoice: alternate solution to both traditional and Internet invoicing
• Augmented Reality Mobile Information of City Works Progress: Multi-platform integrated solution to provide updated information on planned and ongoing urban works to citizens, in order to minimize impact.
• Cowama/iBeach/Smart Panels: Integrated and Real Time Monitoring System to Protect the Quality of Bathing Waters and public communication through multiple channels

Sustainability and Circular Economy:

• Water Reuse for Urban Uses: Water recycling to guarantee hydric sustainability and improve the urban environment for a better quality of life. Automated remote control for irrigation optimization and water quality control.
• Enernova: Remote real time analysis of energy consumption recorded by power meters to optimize energetic efficiency
• PALACE: Multi-model software for water demand prediction, based on a hybrid (time series + external factors) approach

Smart Asset Management:

• Universal AMR System (>40.000 active meters in 2013; to be fully operative in 2015): Remote Meter Reading solving the problems associated to manual Reading, providing added information and services to the consumers
• Metresa-Metrawa: Decision Support System for optimal network renewal, able to prioritize asset replacement/rehabilitation and deliver the best technical solutions
• Idrolewell: comprehensive water well monitoring system, able to perform a complete, real time, continuous diagnosis of the groundwater catchment and pumps.
• Smart infrastructures for flood and waste water discharge prevention, such as the automated stormwater retention tank “Eng. Jose Manuel Obrero” (60.000 m3) or the Floodable Park “La Marjal”
• Ice Pigging: Water supply network cleaning by soft ice injection. This innovative technology greatly improves cleansing efficiency while reducing water use to the minimum

REFERENCES

Vivian Castro, Jan G. Janssens (2011), Mixed Private-Public Ownership Companies “Empresa Mixta” http://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private-partnership/library/mixed-private-public-ownership-companies-empresa-mixta (accessed 22 August 2013)

Ignacio Casals, Carlos Montero (2010), Decision support tool for sewer rehabilitation planning in a Mediterranean city, IWA World Water Congress 2010, Montreal, 19-24 Sept 2010

Aqualogy Business Lien Environment, http://www.aqualogy.net/en/business-lines/environment/31/infrastructure-automation (accessed 22 August 2013)

iBeach website http://www.ibeach.es/ (accessed 23 August 2013)

D. Suñer, P. Malgrat, P. Leitão and B. Clochard (2008), COWAMA (Coastal Water Management) Integrated and Real Time Management System of Urban Water Cycle to Protect the Quality of Bathing Waters, 11th Int. Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK http://web.sbe.hw.ac.uk/staffprofiles/bdgsa/11th_International_Conference_on_Urban_Drainage_CD/ICUD08/pdfs/28.pdf (accessed 23 August 2013)

Ice Pigging Article, UnderGround Newspaper http://www.utilityservice.com/dwnlds/articles/IcePigging_UnderGroundConst.pdf

J.Marco, I. Casals, D. Santracreu (2011), Water reuse and sustainability in the city of Alicante, 8th IWA International Conference on Water Reclamation and Reuse, 26-29 September 2011, Barcelona, Spain