Real-Time Control of Urban Water Systems

This paper presents a review of the current state of the art of real time control (RTC) of urban water systems with emphasis on wastewater and urban drainage issues. The paper provides concise definitions of terms frequently used in the literature. Control options for the transport and treatment systems are discussed. Recent developments of the integration of the complete urban wastewater and drainage system including consideration of the receiving water are described. This allows information from all parts of the system to be used for control decisions and can lead to a significant improvement of the system performance. Some fundamental concepts of this approach are outlined. Particular emphasis in this paper is laid on methodologies of how to derive a control procedure for a given system. As an example of an RTC operational in practice, the Québec Urban Community global predictive RTC system for the urban drainage network is presented. The paper concludes with an outlook into current and future developments in the area of real time control.