How does EMI Patrimoine help local authorities optimize their investments?

As global warming threatens water resources, local authorities are coming under increasing pressure to implement sustainable management systems for their water supply assets.

To help them, imaGeau offers a solution that uses all the available environmental data to develop plans to ensure security of supply and optimize investments. This solution is underpinned by the introduction of a new digital platform called EMI. 

If global warming continues at its current rate, average annual river flow rates could fall by up to 40% by 2070 (compared with a baseline reflecting the years between 1961 and 1990). The amounts of water flowing into water tables to top up groundwater levels will be at least 10-20% lower (1). So for local authorities, protecting water resources is becoming a critical issue, but they will have a series of innovative tools at their disposal to limit the risk to their own areas.

These sustainable management methods will give them the tools they need to ensure service continuity and quality, at the same time as optimizing their investments and therefore limiting their costs. It is precisely to meet these needs that the EMI (Environmental Monitoring Interface) platform has been developed by imaGeau, a Saur Group company dedicated to these issues. No fewer than 180 (figure to be entered by imaGeau) local authorities all over France are already using this service as one way of forecasting the increasing level of drought risk in their areas. 

Levering data to protect local authority water resources

To understand the philosophy behind the EMI platform, you have first to understand that is primarily about data collection. So what it does is begin by capturing all the available environmental data that could potentially influence the water resources of the given local authority; these could be groundwater resources, surface resources or even a dammed reservoir. Every possible source of water for the local authority is included.

EMI processes three main types of data:

• meteorological data (rain, hours of sunshine, etc.) sourced from ECMWF, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
• water resource data (groundwater levels, river flow rates, etc.) retrieved from publicly accessible government department databases via the Hub'Eau service
• operating data (pump operating periods, abstraction volumes, etc.) gathered from local authorities and sensors installed in boreholes or springs.
  
  

Data validation and processing

Statistical methods and artificial intelligence algorithms are then used to validate this valuable data, because inputting unreliable information into the system could distort the results and resulting analyses.

Once this crucial step has been completed, the data is processed against dozens of different risk indicators. The results enable local authorities to identify dangerously low groundwater levels or pinpoint an underperforming borehole. In the more general sense, they are used to provide daily monitoring of the trend in drought conditions and their impact on water production. The mapping and graphic representation of this data allow local authorities to visualize the status of their assets, water resources and day-to-day operations.

The experts in the imaGeau design office no longer have to manipulate data directly, which means they can now focus on translating the outcomes into plans to ensure security of supply and making recommendations that target maintenance initiatives to contain costs, reduce operating expenditure and/or suggest changes designed to optimize borehole performance. The ultimate goal of all this work is to continually improve the quantity and quality of water sourced within the local authority area, at the same time as controlling the costs involved in doing so.

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Sources of figures :

1) Explore 2070 project, a project led by the Ministry of Ecological and Inclusive Transition between 2010 and 2012