Water Control Room: from water demand to targeted action

Introduction

The Water Control Room brings together the information you need to make better water decisions. We translate available data with models and AI into current insights, advice and practical actionable perspective.

Duration: 2012–present
Clients: 175 municipalities, water boards and national governments in the Netherlands and abroad
Keywords: water information, dashboards, monitoring, early warning, data integration, water quality, water quantity, telemetry, weather forecasts, satellite data, operational water management
Models & Tools: Including Grafana, Delft-FEWS, Hydstra, TeleControlNet, own databases, client databases, APIs, global and local weather models, satellite products, hydrological models and custom data processing.

Background

Data silos

What information do you need to make a good water decision at the right moment? That is our starting point. Water managers often have large amounts of data at their disposal, but it is spread across different systems, data sources and organisations. As a result, it takes time to understand the current situation and to translate relevant information into concrete actions. The challenge is not to collect even more data, but to make the available data usable for the people who have to act on it.

Method

Platform- and tool-independent

We start with your issue, work processes and decision moments: which decisions have to be made, by whom, and what information is needed for them? We then bring together relevant data sources, such as monitoring networks, telemetry, client databases, Delft-FEWS, Hydstra, TeleControlNet, APIs, weather models and satellite products. Where necessary, we enrich the data with hydrological models, analyses or AI. We present the results in a tailor-made way in dashboards, maps, graphs, warnings, reports or advice. This creates a solution that fits your practice and translates information into insight, decision support and a concrete actionable perspective.

More about our method

The result

Decision support

The Water Control Room gives you a single, current and coherent picture of the water situation and helps you determine what this means for your actions. Users can recognise developments faster, detect deviations, receive warnings and substantiate decisions. Relevant information can also easily be shared with colleagues, partners and other stakeholders. In this way, available data is actually put to use to make better decisions and achieve more impact.

The approach has been applied in a wide range of contexts: from rainfall information for Dutch municipalities to water information systems in Mozambique, Eswatini, South Africa, Colombia and Australia.

What did the project deliver?

175 organisations use the Water Control Room
Implemented in 12 countries
More than 5,000 users
More than 250 data sources have been connected
Access to a professional helpdesk

“A Water Control Room does not start with technology, but with the question of which decision a water manager wants to be able to make better or faster. Starting from that question, we combine data, models, AI and visualisations into usable information, advice and a concrete actionable perspective. In this way, we turn available data into real impact.”

Ralf Linneman | Product owner