SINERGEA - Real-time forecasting system for managing floods, bathing water quality and wastewater energy consumption

Abstract

Coastal cities face growing challenges from flooding, sea water quality and energy sustainability, which increasingly require an intelligent, real-time management. Urban drainage infrastructures often require pumping stations (PS) in low-lying areas, which transport to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) all waters likely to pollute downstream beaches, including rainfall-derived infiltration inflows and stormwater from small rain events. During the bathing season, decentralized management measures, including naturebased solutions, can be used to retain stormwater and promote its transport to the WWTP after the rainy event. However, the growth in pumped and treated flows increases energy consumption. In addition, realtime tools are required to support the assessment and prediction of the quality of bathing waters, to assess the possible need to prohibit beach water usage. During heavy rainfall events, decentralized management systems can also contribute to mitigate downstream flooding. Nevertheless, this requires the operation of the entire system to be different from that used to protect bathing water.