Second annual DESSIN magazine available
The second annual DESSIN magazine is now available for download here.
This issue deals with the implementation of the Water Framework Directive at DESSIN’s Emscher demo site, the DESSIN ESS evaluation framework, the successful implementation and future work of the Ecosystems Services concept in the water sector, the progress at the single demo sites, a first stygofauna sampling survey in the Llobregat area and it also contains an interview with Durk Krol about his perception of DESSIN: “The most challenging task is to successfully bring the innovations to society and market”.
Enjoy the read!
DESSIN and the Global Water Research Coalition
The Global Water Research Coalition (GWRC) visited the Netherlands in April for their semi-annual board meeting. The GWRC is a partnership of watercycle research organisations from the US, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Singapore, Australia, South-Africa and the Netherlands and a non-profit organisation that serves as the collaborative mechanism for water research. The aim of the GWRC is to leverage funding and expertise amongst the participating research organisations, coordinate research strategies, secure additional funding not available to single country research foundations, and actively manage a centralised approach to global issues. STOWA and KWR, both members of the GWRC, hosted the meeting in KWR’s premises in Nieuwegein.
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DESSIN presented at CPS Week 2016
DESSIN was presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) for Smart Water Networks, at the CPS Week2016 in Vienna, Austria, at the beginning of April.
“Smart water management has become a key policy for the 21st century, setting out the framework for sustainable solutions on water resources utilization. As a result, information and communication technology (ICT) in general, and CPS in particular have been blended with the water infrastructure, towards an emerging engineering field, coined as Smart Water Networks. Driven by the engineering and research challenges, the objective of CySWater 2016 therefore was to bring together researchers and engineers from the fields of Communications/Networking, Learning/Processing, and Control and practitioners from the Water Industry to both share their experiences, as well as formulate novel CPS paradigms for fulfilling the vision of Smart Water Networks.” (CPS Week 2016)
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Find DESSIN on Youtube now
DESSIN has it’s own Youtube-Channel now. During the course of the project, videos about the demo-sites, case studies and the overall progress of the project will go online. Keep your eyes open!
Developing an evaluation framework
The ecosystem can offer solutions to many of the ‘water’ problems that confront us, such as water scarcity and poor water quality. The challenge is to make sustainable use of the ecosystem and, if possible, to actually improve it instead of harming it. But evaluating the options is difficult. The EU-financed DESSIN research project therefore develops an evaluation framework to help the companies and authorities concerned with the use ‘ecosystem services’ to choose the right, sustainable measures – for example, to purify polluted water, or to make up for water shortages in agriculture or in urban areas through the provision of extra freshwater. Click to read more
Impressions of the Llobregat demo site in Spain
Sewer mining software – report available
The sewer-mining software was made for the operators of sewer-mining systems, but it can be applied (with some additions/changes) to any water-based system. It is a complete platform which can be used for monitoring and administration of small packaged plants for urban sewer mining. It is allowing user control, i.e. access to advanced platform functionality (adding/deleting/configuring sensors) to authorized personnel, while providing monitoring functionality to other users. Furthermore, it collects the data from the variable sensors, offering real-time and historical monitoring of the water features/characteristics provided by the sensors (i.e. turbidity, pH, temperature, conductivity, BOD, etc.).
New deliverable available
A report about a demonstrated intelligent software- hardware platform for monitoring and control of small packaged plants for urban sewer mining is available now.
The report contains the results of a task that is related to Athens Demonstration: Sewer Mining for Urban Reuse enabled by Advanced Monitoring Infrastructure. As the actual deliverable is of a nature that can’t be submitted online, it is accompanied by this report, which summarizes the results of the task “Implement the monitoring and supervisory system”.
Almost 400 people visited the Westland demosite in 2015
Since the transformation of Westland demosite to a complete Showcase (including information panels, instruction movies, guide tours and scale model) in the second half of 2015, almost 400 visitors were welcomed. These visitors included stakeholders, scientists, water managers, students, and neighbours. The size of visiting groups also showed an interesting variation: from 4 (geohydrologists from Rotterdam) to 24 (student excursion) to 120 persons (IAHR Congress, held in Rotterdam).
DESSIN Westland showcase on Youtube
Sea level rise, soil subsidence and prolonging periods of droughts increasingly put a strain on the availability of fresh water in delta areas. The Waterbuffer Showcase, which is situated in the Greenport Westland in the Netherlands, demonstrates various small scale subsoil solutions that contribute to a more sustainable fresh water supply, especially in coastal areas. More information on the projects and techniques can be found here.