Urban water infrastructures
play a key role in providing safe and reliable water to meet the needs of growing urban populations. However, their current and future services face a range of challenges including aging infrastructure, non-revenue water, climate stresses, contamination, cyber-physical threats and the continuous need for sustainable and resilient management practices. Addressing these challenges requires innovative approaches and state of art technologies, in both hardware and software terms, and that’s the role HYDRA aims to play.
Τhe scope of HYDRA
spans beyond academia, as it aspires to release new experimental data to support:
Testing & Benchmarking
of smart water technologies (analyse the accuracy and reliability under various experimental conditions, compare results among solution and industry standards, identify best solutions and areas for improvement)
Development & Validation
of new smart water technologies (with a focus on novel models and algorithms based on machine learning and soft-sensors techniques using experimental, yet close to real-world, data, as well as digital services and applications)
As facilitator
for both curiosity-driven research and market-driven industrial research and technology development, HYDRA can be utilised for the development of a wide range of water related innovations, including, but not limited to:
i Efficient
monitoring & early detection of chemical and biological agents
ii Estimation
detection & management of leakages
iii Optimal
management & operation of urban water systems
iv Analysis
of energy losses & pressure control strategies
v Optimal
retrofitting of water infrastructures
vi Emulation
detection & response to cyber-physical threats
vii Design
of decentralized systems & technologies
viii Development
of digital services & models (e.g. data assimilation techniques, real-time modelling, Digital Twin solutions, etc.) for the optimal design, operation & maintenance of urban supply systems in the digital era – covering their full life-cycle.
Users & stakeholders
potentially interested include hydraulics researchers and labs, engineers, data journalists, government agencies, civil protection authorities, and more in general all the organizations interested the sustainable management of water for people and societies. Some examples are listed below
