Modernisation of the Weather Stations Network of the Mexico City Water System

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“With this modernisation, SACMEX has better knowledge of the state of the rains and can reduce their impact in emergency situations, ensuring public safety and the prevention of injury and property damage.”

Ramón AGUIRREGeneral Director. Mexico City Water System.Mexico

Abstract

Mexico City Water System (SACMEX) is responsible for providing the residents of the Federal District with drinking water, drainage and sewerage services, as well as treatment and reuse of wastewater in sufficient quantity and quality. Also, SACMEX is responsible for coordinating the Storm Unit whose mission is to protect hydraulic infrastructures, guaranteeing efficient management in resolving the effects of heavy rain and ensuring the safety of residents and mitigating damage.

To this end, it modernised and expanded the network of weather stations, increasing the range of operation and monitoring, as well as the weather variables. The technologicalrenewal of the information system has enabled an improvement at a technical and functional level, integrating all functions in a single system and equipping SACMEX with a number of key capabilities for the success of their mission.

The new system has maximised efficiency in activating the emergency protocol for storms, facilitating the decision-making process and increasing the level and availability of the service.

Modernisation of the Weather Stations Network of the Mexico City Water System

Benefits

• Ensure optimal and efficient management of episodes of severe storms, minimising the resolution of possible effects on infrastructure and the impact on citizens and the urban environment.

• Guarantee maximum coverage of the region, thanks to a better and powerful weather stations network.

• Facilitate decision-making in emergency situations, due to the technological renew of the system that ensures total reliability and quality of information, which is analysed and validated in real time.

2

In the beginning, SACMEX had 38 conventional rain gauge stations, with limited operating range and monitoring. Not all geographical areas were covered. It also had an obsolete system of collection and processing of information, both at a technical and operational level. The main difficulties faced by SACMEX were:

• The data were in a proprietary system, which restricted integration with other systems and limited the possibilities of analysis of the data collected.

• The previous system did not allow the outcome of the data uploads to be known. There was no way to find out whether there had been an incident during the analysis of the information.

• It did not have any tools for manually changing erroneousdata, consequently it generated incorrect reports.

• The integration of market weather stations was not possible.

• As a result, it only acquired precipitation variables, without considering other meteorological variables such as temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, etc.

• There was no integrated analytical tool in the system so an external tool was required for analysing calculated and aggregated data.

All this led to the need for modernisation of the conventional weather stations, which represented an increase of 40 additional stations with meteorological multisensors and their integration into a single information system. Today, SACMEX has a network of 78 stations that collect, manage and validate rainfall data in real time.

• This modernisation has enabled SACMEX to improve technologically and be equipped with a number of key capabilities for the success of its mission.

• Double the amount of real time information on precipitation, increasing the capacity of decision-making in episodes of heavy rainfall.

• Improve the exploitation of data through a Business Intelligence module ensuring historical, calculated and aggregated data can be queried.

• Facilitate quick, easy and dynamic access to informationthanks to reports and graphical layout.

• Expand the measurement system of meteorological variables, such as humidity, temperature and the pressure, speed and direction of the wind in order to supplement the information on rainfall.

Figure 1. The main view reports on the impact of rainfall in the territory and prioritises emergency actions using a colour scale and isohyets.



Figure 2. The system contains reports that analyse the evolution of precipitation, by consulting the database of automatically corrected and validated historical and aggregated data.

• Include more detailed information on rainfall with maps of isohyets, providing additional parameter monitoring and control, the display of the amount of rainfall in the territory from the interpolation of the data from the stations.

• Increase the accuracy and reliability of the data obtained through station redundancy.

•Cost savings from automatic validation of information.

“The new system has increased efficiency in activating the emergency protocol for storms, facilitating the decision-making process.”

Thanks to this modernisation of the infrastructures and software, SACMEX has better knowledge of the state of the rains and minimises its impact in emergencies, activating the protocol when necessary, with the main aim of ensuring public safety and preventing property damage and injury.

Since its introduction in 2012, the new system has been consolidated within the Unit and its use has made it possible to activate the emergency protocol with increased storm detection efficiency over the previous system. Also, thanks to the new features of automatic validation and correction of data, the time commitment of staff assigned to these tasks has been optimised, eliminating possible errors and reducing their workload.

3

About Adasa

Adasa is an engineering company that provides technological solutions for the management of the integral water cycle, the environment and meteorology.

Founded in 1988, Adasa is recognised by its own products and technology, which are the result of over 15 years of investment in R&D and innovation. Adasa joins water and environment expertise and highly specific technology capabilities, leading to the development of high added-value solutions to ensure a better decision-making process, increase efficiency and reduce operational risks and costs.

Adasa’s portfolio includes solutions applied to the management of water resources (water quality monitoring and hydrology) and smart operation solutions for water utilities and irrigation and rural water. Adasa also offers meteorology and air quality monitoring systems.



Figure 3. Creation of reports ready for dissemination.

Environment

Modernisation of the Weather Stations Network of the Mexico City Water System