In the past years, our 3 NAIADES pilots have been busy developing innovative smart water management solutions to respond to the pressing challenges related to water in the city. Through a series of brief interviews, we catch up with the pilots representatives on the progress of their work and the lessons learned so far.
In this interview, we checked in with Ignacio Casals, from the Alicante Pilot:
What has been the focus of your activities in the past months? What are the plans for the remaining period?
During the last months, we finished the design of the Municipal Consumption Dashboard to include all the parameters, indicators and warnings that should deliver an in-depth insight of the consumption for the Municipality. We have also worked on the information provided by the Global Water Observatory, to provide as much meaningful, useful information on water as possible, at both local and worldwide level.
We have finished the implementation of the saline infiltration sensor network and we are currently analysing the data retrieved to characterise these events and identify the sections of the network in which they take place. Finally, we have worked on the Decision Support System that will analyse the results at a higher level, giving a more elaborated guidance on how to proceed to the managers.
What are your plans for the future? What will be the "after-life" of the project?
We obviously want to make use of all the results developed by NAIADES, but I would like to highlight the role that these applications will play in the future "Centro de Inteligencia del Agua" (Water Intelligence Centre) of Alicante, that has just been announced. This new facility, managed jointly by the municipality and Aguas de Alicante, will be opened in December, in the city centre; it will integrate a real time operational hub with an open space for public information, with the main objective of bringing the management of the water cycle closer to the citizens, in a transparent way. We want NAIADES applications, such as the Global Observatory or the Municipal Consumption Dashboard, to play a fundamental function in the initiative, as we believe that they can be a key element in implementing this vision.