A digital anti-flood defense line has been built based on a smart water conservancy platform to help with prediction capabilities relating to the Typhoon In-Fa, restore operation of the public transportation network and maintain order in people's lives in East China's Jiangsu province.
On July 27, Typhoon In-Fa landed in Wuxi, Jiangsu, bringing heavy rains to the affected areas. During the downpour, there was no flooding apparent in the low-lying areas and the subway system resumed normal operation at 6 pm that night and residents were able to go about their business as usual.
A reporter from the Science and Technology Daily visited the relevant government departments and communities of Wuxi on July 28, to learn about the smart technologies successfully deployed in the anti-flooding action.
According to the Wuxi Water Conservancy Bureau, the anti-flood command and decision-making support system is linked with the anti-flood data centers at four levels in the province and 769 real-time monitoring points, which includes real-time data of rainfall, water levels and operational conditions.
It is worth noting that through the data center, the anti-flood working group can quickly and comprehensively obtain information on the flood conditions of the roads, realize intelligent monitoring and give out early warning. Once sudden danger occurs, on-site emergency monitoring and hidden danger investigation will be immediately carried out, which improves danger handling efficiency by more than 30 percent.
A smart real-time flood forecasting, early warning and gate pump intelligent dispatching system also contributed to the recent anti-flood response in Wuxi.
The system was developed based on the hydrological-hydrodynamic river network model of Taihu Lake area in Jiangsu. It integrates future scenarios based on time period, rainfall pattern and real-time water conditions and can produce and optimize anti-flood solutions according to the predicted rain falls by core algorithms and knowledge based, self-learning technologies.
At Binhu district in Wuxi, the flood control department replaced the old float type water level indicator installed on the gate and ship inlet and outlet with the advanced radar water gauge, which improved detection accuracy and anti-interference performance, and at the same time reduced maintenance costs.
In Yixing, a county-level city managed by Wuxi, the ground-penetrating radar technology has been used to assess risks on the municipal roads in old city area, which helped eliminate security risks and provided decision basis in affected areas.
According to a staff member at the Wuxi Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the equipment can help detect conditions at about 3 meters deep underground and can even clearly show the scale of the abnormal parts and the spatial layout of the formations.
What's more, the ground penetrating radar is nondestructive and it can quickly and continuously detect conditions with high resolution.
Before Typhoon In-Fa arrived, more than 11,000 stores received reminders of the upcoming heavy rains which were sent through the smart city management system in the Wuxi National Hi-Tech District. It represents an innovative application of the system in flood control and rescue.
Li Zhonglan at the Digital Management and Monitoring Command Center of the Urban Management Bureau of Wuxi National Hi-Tech District said that, after a year of operation the system now has a wide range of high-resolution data relating to more than 12,000 objects of management across six sectors, including construction sites, high street stores, illegal construction, outdoor advertising, open fairs and commercial complexes.
On normal days, the city management team is able to carry out service and management tasks through the system and when a flood event occurs, useful information can be accurately sent to the management targets by the system.
Li added that a unified intermediate data pool and visual command and dispatching platform will be built in the future to strengthen data connectivity between the different systems of the smart city management platform, improve big data analysis capability, enhance promptness of response and accuracy of command to further meet the needs of routine work and emergency situations and ensure smooth information reporting channels.
