Breaking down boundaries with FIWARE

2020-03-30 14:25:54

On Thursday March 26 our partner the Future City Foundation hosted, in collaboration with the FIWARE foundation, an online 'get-together' with around 90 guests from all over the world. The main speaker that afternoon was Ulirch Ahle, the CEO of the FIWARE Foundation. He gave interesting insights into the possibilities of FIWARE for, among other things, smart water management. His presentation + the Q&A that followed can be rewatched on YouTube.  

 

FIWARE and the SCOREwater project

A short recap why FIWARE is interesting for the SCOREwater project. The goal of SCOREwater is to develop, collect data and test water-smart digital solutions and best practices to strengthen cities’ resilience focusing on wastewater, flooding and stormwater monitoring and management. The collection of data and the testing of the water-smart solutions will take place on a digital platform , which is currently under development. This adaptive digital platform will be developed using standards such as FIWARE.

 

Why do we need standards like FIWARE?

Our digital life will gravitate around context information. What's happening when, where, and why in any place. This information is often organised in silos. Examples of silos are interfaces that don't work together, state regulations that prohibit the sharing of context information, companies not working together, etc. At FIWARE their mission is to break down those silos to make data and information available, with the aim to reduce the cost of operating a city (Smart City concept) and to increase the quality of life for people living in the city. In one sentence, working on smart, liveable cities.

 

FIWARE solutions relating to water management | Flood warning systems

The SCOREwater case studies are in progress and you can read more about them here. The SCOREwater project is not an isolated case in the use of FIWARE standards, there are multiple examples of successful implementation stories, like the one in the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo, as explained by Ulrich Ahle.

The problem the inhabitants of Montevideo have to deal with is regular floods in their city. When it rains a lot in the back lands, it all comes down the mountain slopes and the rivers and floods the city. To be able to predict these floods, there are sensor being installed all over the city, measuring the water levels and connecting this data to data from the weather stations and floodgates. Currently the city is developing an app for the citizens that uses all this real-time data to create personalised prediction models.

One use case is that a car owner gets a personalised warning, through the app, that the current parking spot will be flooded in 'x' amount of time. These personalised warnings give people the chance to react on the events and to take precautionary measures.

 

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