Print this chapterPrint this chapter

D1.2 Roadmap of the research team in SDWM

2 Roadmap

This section presents the roadmap for the future research activity of the UPB team in collaboration with the partners in this project. From the Roadmap, a detailed operational plan, for the duration of the project, is extracted.

The aim of our research is to improve the water management by the use of Smart Data, more specific, to offer ICT Smart_Data-based instruments and solutions that facilitate the water sustainable management. The research includes the management of drinking water, wastewater, storm water, idustrial water, farm water, city water, watersheds, floods, water pollution, other water-related natural disasters, etc.

While the approach is promising, there are a lot of challenges in Smart Data analysis:

  • Heterogeneity of data sources;
  • Incompleteness of collected data;
  • Large scale of the distributed systems supporting the data processing;
  • Data uncertainty due to failures of nodes or to network disconnections;
  • Getting useful information;
  • water resources monitoring is influenced by agricultural, industry, and ecosystem management
  • water resources monitoring is influenced by climate change (for example, it can make data accumulated in databases no longer valid);
  • etc.

Despite the challenges mentioned above, the use of Smart Data will impact the models, methods, techniques, technologies and platforms used in ICT water management and will allow:

  • use multiple data sources;
  • more accurate models;
  • more accurate system monitoring;
  • real time data processing along with historical data processing;
  • alerts;
  • predictions;
  • decision support;
  • system optimisation (performance, fault tolerance, etc.);
  • efficient resource usage;
  • service adaptation to users’ profiles (community and business leaders, industries, farmers, policymakers, academics, cityzens, and others);
  • better understand the coupled human-natural system dynamics;
  • find risk mitigation measures for the unintended consequences and side effects like water scarcity, increased pollution, unreasonable use of water, flood, food prices;
  • develop strategies for efficient use of water resources;
  • etc.

Smart Data support a better organisation of the future research directions in ICT water management:

- explore water synergies with energy, land, food, agriculture, transport, climate change, Smart Cities, and smart home ecosystems; understand the correlations between different factors and facilitate the increase of the value of Smart Data;

- develop technologies and standards to increase interoperability and facilitate data sharing:

  • open source platforms or components, and common programming interfaces (APIs);
  • selection/development of new data models and metadata catalogues;
  • development of new performance indicators;
  • develop new privacy preservation techniques and guidelines;
  • address the fundamental interconnected nature of watershed resources using a holistic, integrated approach to water management; integrated information-centric system will facilitate the conversion of data to knowledge; the process integrates the hydrological information with the economics, political and social disciplines;
  • develop optimized anomaly detection solutions to improve the quality of smart sensors data used in water management;
  • develop anonymity protection of data sources that share and interact around content and information on mobile and web-based platforms; data anonymization targets the privacy protection of data sources;
  • extend the Cloud to IoT, for optimizing the managing of data for water by rapidly, near to source processing data or analizing and sending it to other IoTs and/or Cloud;
  • develop  and validate a model and architecture for water resource sharing in Smart Cities.

- improve the performance of Decision Support Systems, which may make use of increasingly more types and amounts of data (e.g., including real time data, geographical data, etc.);

- ensure consumer awareness, induce sustainable changes in consumption behavior, and improve social perceptions for water (focus on citizens);

- develop cost effective technical solutions addressing water monitoring (e.g. sensing, analysis, engagement) for sustainable water management;

- improve the methodology for calculating the true cost of water; reduce the total cost of ownership for water ICT;

- propose evaluation methodologies, guidelines and education to stakeholders;

- improved the social perceptions of water (adaptive pricing strategies, legal and policy challenges);

- develop a support for involving simple citizens in the water management (the process is known as „citizen science” and facilitates the monitoring by simple citizens, government agencies, industry, academia, community groups, local institutions, working together);

- adhere to Open Access initiatives for EU (a tool to facilitate and improve the circulation of information and transfer of knowledge in the European Research Area and beyond);

- propose evaluation methodologies, guidelines and education to stakeholders;

- develop common frameworks and KPIs that allow objective assessment of improvements;

- elaborate sustainable business models for the application of ICT on water management.