How digitalisation can help water utilities adapt to climate change: a concrete case in Athens, Greece

Managing water in the water-scarce region of Attica: a historical concern

The water offered today by EYDAP (Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company) for consumption, in an uninterrupted supply, is potable and safe, ranking its quality in top levels and among the best in Europe. However, it was not always like this. Attica has always been an area with limited rainfall, and therefore, water resources have never been adequate. Thus, from the very early days, its inhabitants had to develop elaborate water collection and distribution systems for the water supply of the city, which were improved with the passing of time and the progress of technology. Currently, EYDAP acquires raw water mainly from surface water resources, from the basins of Marathonas, Yliki, Mornos and Evinos. The transfer of raw water to the Water Treatment Plants (WTP) is done via an extensive external aqueduct system with a total length of 485 km.

Representation of the external water supply system of EYDAP

The Water supply network needs to adapt to climate change and to a growing demand

Although at the present Athens seems to be safe in regards to water shortage, according to the EC’s Joint Research Center (JRC), Athens is one of the cities that could be severely impacted by climate change within the 30 next years. Additionally, water demand in the greater Athens region is growing at an excessive rate, driven by a growing urban population. For these reasons, it is of crucial importance for EYDAP to optimize the water resources and water supply network management and avert a water crisis that could affect millions of people.

Digitalizing Athens water utility (EYDAP) to meet these challenges

In this view, Fiware4Water consortium is currently developing new tools for the further improvement of the operation plan of EYDAP’s external water supply system. These tools will assist EYDAP in safeguarding the water supply network operation ensuring demand monitoring, pressure level monitoring, pressure zones modifications and better alertness against operation failures.

In particular, the Fiware4Water has set the following goals for EYDAP responding to the Company’s need for constant improvement:

• facilitate the integration of different sensors from different vendors into a common system.
• facilitate the development of different applications (models, analytics) by different developers on the data available.
• interface seamlessly with and provide added value to legacy systems (sensors and online control systems – such as the one seen in the figure above, currently housed in EYDAP’s internal servers).

Author: EYDAP, Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company