Enterprise IT vendor IBM is supporting the Southern Ontario Water Consortium’s data integration platform for watershed management.
The IBM project is assisting researchers, urban planners and others to develop tools to predict floods, protect drinking water supply and forecast the impact of growth and urbanization on vital ecosystems, said IBM.
This platform assimilates 600 data points per hour, streaming from more than 120 sensors installed within 80 square kilometers of watershed along the Grand River in southern Ontario.
IBM said the platform analyzes data collected every 15 minutes from groundwater sensors, which monitor rain- and snowfall, soil moisture, water turbidity, flow rates, temperature, ground- and well-water quality, etc.
“This is an application of smart technologies to offer a rare, perhaps unprecedented understanding of the influence of urbanization and associated land use management in watersheds under various degrees of development,” said Dan Fortin, president of IBM Canada.
The technology platform including IBM’s Intelligent Water software, and IBM contributed consulting expertise as well as a cloud infrastructure — is available to stakeholders including academics, provincial and municipal administrators and individuals or companies looking to develop, test or demonstrate new systems or technologies.
