Expert-system for automatically managing high water levels with smart infrastructures
Voies Navigables de France began to look into the possibility of using its summit level transport network to reduce the sector's exposure to flood risks. By increasing the resilience of the hydraulic infrastructures and the forecasting and emergency systems, the network can be used to store and draw off part of the flood waters from the surrounding watercourses with a noticeable reduction of the effects of the high water levels on the network as well as on goods and people.
The so-called expert-system is made up of three complementary and indivisible segments:
- The real-time acquisition of meteorological data and water height and flow data. This data is then processed by a 1D real-time propagation model to extrapolate the results for the entire network and allow a preventive action based on the forecasts. This model will be a data assimilation model: it will evolve with each iteration according to the measurements made.
- The deployment of infrastructures to reduce the effects of the high water levels: by trapping as much water as possible upstream of the drainage basins using dams, by diverting as much water as possible from the flooded rivers to inert sectors and by preventing the watercourses from making the canals burst their banks, which could lead to a weakening of the embankments and a domino effect.
- The speed at which the infrastructures can react to events with a secure remote management system that translates the hydraulic data of the data assimilation model into operational instructions which can then be remotely and automatically applied.
In this way, the entire system works together to take instant and highly optimised actions within the sector, providing hence safety and insuring best hydraulic management.