It’s hot outside! According to our sensor it is 34 degrees at the moment I am writing this. So naturally, there is only one thing on my mind: I want to swim! Well, according to IBM, 66 percent of my country is prone to flooding either by sea or rivers. So it seems like half of the nation will feel the need to swim in the near future. Or perhaps not?
Every year, we spend 7 billion Euros on water management: sea gates and levees, canals, drainage ditches and pumping stations. And these costs might even rise by 1-2 billion Euros by 2020. In comes Digital Delta: a 12-month research program investigating how to integrate and analyze water data in order to reduce these costs by 20-30%. The project involves amongst others Rijkswaterstaat, IBM, the Delfland Water Board, TU Delft and Deltares.
These parties will examine how to share information effectively and how to re-use ICT applications to improve water management, by creating a central registry of data sources and by implementing a standardized data format. The registry will be built by IBM, but will become public property at the end of the project. Existing and new data sources will be connected to the central system: precipitation measurements, water level and water quality monitors, levee sensors, radar data, or current and maintenance data from sluices, pumping stations, locks and dams. IBM will also built a Service Development Kit (SDK), so that third parties can use the data to built applications.
I’m curious to see what the results of Digital Delta will be. Will we actually save money, whilst saving our country from flooding? Which data will we find in the Digital Delta SDK? And which apps will be built with it? But first, I think I’ll enjoy our Dutch waters and take a swim to cool off!
