Sweco Sweden and Calejo Industrial Intelligence have signed an agreement to develop tomorrow's sustainable water and sewerage system with the help of advanced AI.
In a first step, the parties will develop a smarter and more optimized control of pumps and pumping stations in order to prevent overflow. The ultimate goal is to together create a completely new intelligent water supply and sewerage platform for the municipalities under the name Smart Water.
Digital twins of water and sewerage systems
Sweco and Calejo are implementing and have already implemented several successful projects with Swedish municipalities, where they with a more optimized control of the pumps completely succeed in preventing the risk of overflows. With the help of AI and so-called hybrid intelligence, a digital twin of the pump control is built. The model is initially trained on historical data based on precipitation data, power consumption and water levels in the pump sumps.
The digital twin is fed with data in real time and then shows alternatives to how each pumping station should pump to prevent overflows. In the next step, the pumps will be controlled directly or via existing control systems, says Johannes Holmberg, CEO of Calejo Industrial Intelligence.
The vision is to build a platform together, which combines Calejo's expertise in AI modeling and optimization with Sweco's leading water and sewerage expertise and which helps Sweden's municipalities to a more sustainable and resource-efficient wastewater management. The solution will reduce the strain on our recipients through reduced overflows.
Overflows a growing environmental problem
Overflow is a growing problem that all societies and municipalities today have major problems with solving. Flooding or overflow of untreated wastewater causes eutrophication in our waterways, lakes and seas.
- We have high hopes that the new solution will limit the municipalities' problems with overflows, and there will be great benefits for the environment. It is important to reduce eutrophication in our lakes and watercourses in order to make it possible to swim without risk of wastewater at our beaches, says Magnus Almfors, Business Unit Manager Water & Sewerage at Sweco Sweden.
Big gains for the municipalities
With the help of Calejo's and Sweco's new optimization technology, the problems can be limited without the need for extensive investments in new infrastructure and the construction of new, expensive and cumbersome leveling reservoirs and dams.
The technology also contributes to increased energy efficiency and in the long term, the Smart Water platform will also be supplemented with optimization tools for drinking water and more efficient treatment at treatment plants.
Initial services for Smart Water - Warning system for overflow. - Evaluation of current overflow volumes. - Demonstration of a theoretical potential to reduce overflow levels. - Simulation of the flow in the wastewater networks. - Forecast of future flows to treatment plants. - Identify any changes in pump capacity over time. - Identify and visualize the amount and type of supplemental water.
