Jiujiang City, located in East China’s Jiangxi Province, borders Lushan Mountain to the south, the Yangtze River to the north, and Poyang Lake to the east, and features numerous rivers and lakes within its borders. The city faces challenges of both flooding during rainy seasons when rainfall and water levels rise, and stagnant, foul-smelling water during dry periods due to insufficient water flow.
The China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG) has introduced a novel water management solution for the dilemma.
An aerial view of Jiujiang City [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
Effective management of excessive water
In 2021, the average annual precipitation in China was 691.6 millimeters, while the average precipitation in Jiujiang City reached 1,553.7 millimeters.
The main challenge in Jiujiang is excessive water, with rainfall concentrated mainly between May and June, characterized by heavy and intense rainfall, said a relevant person in charge of the Jiangxi regional company of the Yangtze Ecology and Environmental Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of CTG.
Effective water management requires a deep understanding of the water situation and the capacity to manage the drainage and treat water.
However, in many cities, water regime information is scattered across different departments, and there's no centralized collection and analysis. There are large data gaps regarding the drainage capacity of underground infrastructure, particularly engineering works like pipelines.
Jiujiang's water management involves a complex urban water system that includes mountains, the city, rivers, lakes, and the Yangtze River.
Five years ago, CTG started to participate in the Yangtze River Protection Action in Jiujiang. The underground renewal of drainage pipelines began simultaneously with smart water management.
The foundation of smart water management is digitization, said a relevant person in charge of the smart water company of CTG. City drainage systems, which are hidden infrastructures, benefit from digitalization by making the system transparent and manageable. This is how we realize water control.
Fanglan Sewage Treatment Plant in Jiujiang City [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
The first step on the road to digital water control in Jiujiang occurred at the Fanglan Sewage Treatment Plant.
In 2019, through collaborative efforts between Yangtze Ecology and Environment Co., Ltd. and CTG’s Shanghai Investigation, Design & Research Institute Co., Ltd., the Fanglan Sewage Treatment Plant completed the digital storage of multi-source data, application function development, and system joint debugging and testing within four months. This breakthrough included the establishment of a smart water construction model, business processes, data asset management, and the development of a smart water management platform as part of the Yangtze River Protection Action.
Smart water management should encompass the entire lifecycle of engineering design, construction, operation and maintenance. The smart water company of CTG is working towards full coverage in Jiujiang, emphasizing urban smart water management that focuses on the pipeline network.
So far, in various projects within the Yangtze River Protection Action led by CTG, smart water management projects have been progressively implemented in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.
Hewen Sewage Treatment Plant in Jiujiang [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
Establishment of digital pipe network
River beach scenery in Jiujiang [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
CTG used digital means to conduct a general survey and test of around 80 square kilometers of existing pipeline network in Jiujiang at the beginning of the Yangtze River Protection Action. They also managed to establish an electronic archive through application software developed by the smart water company of CTG that covers basic information of pipes such as the coordinates, burial depth, orientation, material, and diameter of the pipeline, as well as the presence of structural or functional defects and defect grades.
In the process of building and repairing pipe networks, all information about the pipeline network is dynamically recorded. Furthermore, monitoring equipment such as liquid level meters and flow meters is scientifically deployed according to operational requirements, enabling real-time collection of operational data such as liquid level, flow, and water quality.
The approximately 2,100 kilometers of pipeline network built by CTG in Jiujiang have been digitized.
It’s not only in Jiujiang; this digitalization effort also extends to other cities in all pipeline network projects for the Yangtze River protection undertaken by CTG, said the person in charge of the engineering construction department of the smart water company of CTG.
The company’s digital team has been stationed in more than 40 projects in various cities, and its Yangtze River protection digital pipe network library ranks as the largest in the country, boasting a total length of more than 40,000 kilometers.
The data from these pipeline networks serve as the foundation for smart water management, and provide crucial support for decision-making in integrated water environment governance.
Data-driven smart water system
In Jiujiang's smart water management control center, a large screen displays all water data collected by monitoring devices.
The monitoring equipment installed transmits data to the smart water management control center in real time every day, which provides important support for water environment management in various scenarios in Jiujiang, according to a project manager of the smart water company of CTG.
Previously, when there was a pipeline blockage causing wastewater overflow, it was challenging to locate the issue, and the maintenance workload was heavy and there were no rules to follow. However, with the digital system, maintenance staff can quickly identify problems based on real-time online data.
We can determine whether there is a risk of blockage and overflow in the pipe network based on real-time data such as flow rate and liquid level. We can also compare the flow rate and flow of the pipe network on rainy days and sunny days to determine whether there are problems such as rain and sewage mixed connection, according to the smart water company of CTG.
Smarter system with water models
In addition to smart water management systems, Jiujiang has built five specific models featuring waterlogging pipeline hydrodynamics, pipeline water quality, river hydrodynamics, and river water quality according to specific scenarios to predict the evolution of various water environment indicators under different weather conditions.
These models rely on accumulated operational data over time. Continuous data-based deductions and verification are required to ensure that the models become increasingly accurate.
Monitoring devices send real-time monitoring data, such as flow, liquid level, flow rate and COD concentration of pipe networks and plants to the smart water system every five minutes. After more than one year, the accuracy of each model in the system has reached over 85%.
In the future, we will have 20 years of operational data in Jiujiang to continue adjusting these models and the smart water management system will become more and more intelligent, according to the company.
In addition, Jiujiang is actively exploring intelligent diagnosis and control for wastewater treatment plants. The smart water company of CTG is developing a sewage biological reaction model that simulates typical wastewater treatment processes. In case the effluent quality of the wastewater treatment plant does not meet standards, the model can diagnose the cause and help improve the efficiency of plant operations.
Jiujiang Shili River with clear water and green willows Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
The digitization empowers water management to move from simple observations of water phenomena to data-based predictions. The trends in data changes can assist in making dynamic management decisions, thereby enhancing governance, reducing costs, and improving the effectiveness of water environment management, said the person in charge of Yangtze Ecology and Environmental Co., Ltd.
(Executive editor: Xie Yunxiao)
