MUNICIPAL 4.0

In Germany, about 6-7 billion euros are invested annually in urban water management in the renovation or new construction of structures and equipment (Source: Flyer UBA „Wasserwirtschaft in Deutschland” – Water supply and sanitation, as of April 2014, figures for 2010). Of this sector alone, 4.5 billion euros are accounted for by wastewater disposal. The German wastewater infrastructure has developed in the past socially and spatially balanced and has grown over many decades as a central system. This ensures today a nationwide disposal with high drainage safety. This is accompanied by an extremely long technical and economic life span. The consequence is a lack of flexibility – an obstacle to the drastic changes (such as industrialization, changing consumer behavior and demographic shifts) that will face sewer and sewage plant operators in the future. The same applies to the water supply and other infrastructure sectors, such as Energy supply and transport systems. At the same time, despite numerous predictive models, unexpected precipitation events occur again and again and thus capacity problems in channel systems and peripheral devices, such as, for example, Road gullies.

A cross-divisional or cross-departmental exchange of information or even operational data via a data platform to the use of data services on the Internet for an actually possible preventive management has not existed yet, although it would bring a tremendous support and significant improvement to the operational management. In many municipalities and cities, the already existing measurements provide extremely large amounts of data on water management issues that are, however, not sufficiently targeted. Even within the municipalities and cities, these existing data are hardly collected, evaluated and then processed and used for the holistic management of sewer network, rainwater tanks and sewage treatment plants. In particular, the most important input variable in water management, precipitation, often finds its way into surveys and calculations only as a statistical mean, without sufficient consideration of local features, although services are now available, e.g. Provide precipitation data as an archive or as a prediction for local considerations via Internet access (e.g. www.niraweb.de).

The Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy has selected the HST project “MUNICIPAL 4.0 – Customized Services for Water Management” for funding in the technology program “Smart Service World – Internet-based Services for the Economy“.