WeSenseIt: Public water observatory
WeSenseIt enables the general public to actively contribute to water information gathering, evaluation and communication. Various forms of community participation in water governance are being used to develop an interdisciplinary concept, where water practitioners, consultants, industry leaders, and other stakeholders jointly work together.
WeSenseIt is a top-notch research project with participating leading European institutes in the areas of hard- and soft monitoring as well as in water modelling. In this project experts of technical universities and professionals of industry work with social scientists, water authorities, the man in the street and youngsters.
Soft and hard monitoring
Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook are used to gather and map locations of social activity and heavy information exchange such as in case of calamities. Special data mining technologies are used to abstract the water related features and to automatically segment it and provide information on burning issues. This soft information is merged with hard information of environmental monitoring networks of sensors such as water level, discharge and rainfall sensors.
Model development
The information abstracted from the soft and hard monitoring networks are assimilated with online modelling tools which run in real time to forecast water emergency situations such as leakages of drinking water networks, sudden floods and water-polluting spills. These models run in decision support modes to warn and assist water authorities in their operational tasks such as emergency planning, warning and evacuation of people.
Sharing information
The WeSenseIt information is shared between professionals and the general public through social networks and specific applications such as web-portals and smart phone applications.
HydroLogic together with other European specialised companies of the consortium is developing portal technologies and smart phone apps for providing and sharing hydro-meteorological information such as the RainWatch tool for professional and public use.
More information: http://www.wesenseit.com/
The project received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreement No. 308429.