Continuous Monitoring and Adaptive Control: The 'Smart' Stormwater Management Solution

The approach to managing storm water, and the implementation of storm water infrastructure, has not kept pacewith the digitally enabled environment. Since the first run-off systems designed in ancient times, moving stormwater away from cities to protect life and property has been the primary concern – out of sight, out of mind. Theengineering and science community agree: extreme weather events and climatic conditions such as floods anddroughts are more likely in the future. To keep up, the built environment is changing by integrating smarttechnologies and holistic approaches to infrastructure design and management. Regulations for the mitigation ofpollution caused by urban run-off require more accuracy than those in the past. Future water resources design mustadapt to these new conditions. Adaptation includes using smart systems, such as continuous monitoring andadaptive control, to repurpose the existing infrastructure and build modern systems that harness storm water’slatent value – changing what was once thought of as a liability into an asset.