IBM: Immersed in Smart Water Management

Information technology is not necessarily an intuitive match with environmental concerns, but recent breakthroughs by corporate giant IBM are affecting water management in positive ways around the world. The goal, said Sharon Nunes, Vice President of IBM's Big Green Innovations, which deals with advanced water management, is to provide agencies, utilities and private industry with precise data. A fast, accurate, local weather prediction, for example, can help clients -- water management-related or otherwise -- prepare for sudden storms. "Information like this helps to minimize business costs and work flow is more efficient," Ms. Nunes said.

Last year, IBM established a Centre of Excellence for Water Management in Amsterdam where the focus is on flood management and levee systems, and in Dublin where a project called SmartBay monitors data about tidal flow, wave heights, temperature and phyloplankton via sensors placed throughout Galway Bay. Locally, IBM joined with New York's Beacon Institute in 2007 to launch a monitoring network in the Hudson River that records information about oxygen content, temperature and wind speed, and assesses how these affect aquatic life. IBM sends scientists to Beacon, to mentor local college students and to teach the teachers. "Eventually the plan is to place sensors along entire length of the Hudson, down to the Harbor and up to Troy," said Ms. Nunes. (A Hudson River sensor is pictured in the photo at right.)

"The Hudson River is the pilot river system for this groundbreaking initiative, and the 12 million people who live within its watershed will be the first beneficiaries of our work," said John Cronin, Director and Chief Executive Officer of The Beacon Institute when the project was announced in 2007. "This new way of observing, understanding and predicting how large river and estuary ecosystems work ultimately will allow us to translate that knowledge into better policy, management and education for the Hudson River and for rivers and estuaries worldwide."

Visit http://www.thebeaconinstitute.org/approach/reondata.php for real-time data from the Beacon Institute's Hudson River sensors.

WaterWire asked Ms. Nunes a couple other questions:

• In your opinion, what is the primary water management challenge for the New York region? "Contaminants on top of asphalt running off into the waterways," she said. "There are new technologies that IBM is working on to address this, such as permeable pavement."
• Can IBM's information technology address the problem of combined sewer overflows, a particular bane of New York City? "We're talking to business partners about potentially getting involved," Ms. Nunes said. "It's a great opportunity for measuring and monitoring water. If you think about traffic management, your GPS knows all the roads. It can do a rerouting for you. There's a lot of commonality on how you could manage water flow through underground pipes. If you have real-time traffic monitoring and management of water flow you would have a much better chance at minimizing combined sewer overflow."