Projects of European Comunity




Integrated Flood Risk Analysis and Management Methodologies

Head of project: Prof. Ing. Jaroslav Pollert, DrSc.
Project homepage: www.floodsite.net

Problem to solved

The management of flood risk is a critical component of public safety and quality of life. The FLOODsite Integrated Project will produce improved understanding of specific flood processes and mechanism and methodologies for flood risk analysis and management ranging from the high level management of risk at a river – basin, estuary and coastal process cell scale down to the detailed assessment in specific areas. It includes specific actions on the hazard of coastal extremes, coastal morphodynamics and flash flood forecasting, as well as understanding of social vulnerability and flood impacts, which are critical to improving the mitigation of flood risk from all causes. The project seeks to identify technologies and strategies for sustainable flood mitigation and defence, recognising the complex interaction between natural bio-physical system and socio-economics systems, to support spatial and policy planning in the context of global change and societal advance. Several pilot studies are included in FLOODsite. These will identify lessons from recent floods (e.g. Elbe, 2002), and test the proposed operational use of methods on integrated risk management and suistanable flood defence (the Thames and scheldt Estuaries, the Elbe river basin and the Ebro coastal delta) or new technology for flash flood forecasting (in France and Italy). FLOODsite will also develop common language, guidance and tools for dissemination of the project results and professional training packages. FLOODsite will build upon the previous and current European and national research and practise in river and coastal flood processes and flood risk mitigation methods to promote consistency of approach.

Assessing Infiltration and Exfiltration on the Performance of Urban Sewer Systems (APUSS)

Head of project: Prof.Ing. Jaroslav Pollert, DrSc.
Contact person: Ing. David Kohout, Ing. Ivan Princ
Project homepage: http://www.insa-lyon.fr/Laboratoires/URGC-HU/apuss

Problem to solved

Urban sewer systems (USS) constitute a very significant patrimony in European cities. Their structural quality and functional efficiency are key parameters to guarantee the transfer of domestic and trade wastewater to treatment plants without neither infiltration nor exfiltration. Infiltration of groundwater is particularly detrimental to treatment plant efficiency (hydraulic overloading due to the infiltrated volume of water which can reach up to 100 % of the wastewater volume in some cities, dilution of pollutant concentrations which leads to a lower pollutant removal efficiency), while exfiltration of wastewater can lead to groundwater contamination (especially where groundwater is a water resource for drinking water production). Both problems are critical on a long-term basis for sustainable urban water management and have important economic consequences for cities and sewer systems operators through the EU. The participants in the project, associated with cities and sewer operators concerned by these problems, have complementary knowledge and experiences they have decided to bring together in order to propose methods and tools to assess infiltration / exfiltration rates on more serious and scientific basis than before, and to help cities and operators to define better investment and rehabilitation strategies.

Description of the work

Leaky house connections are assumed to contribute to a major extent to the infiltration of groundwater to the sewer system on the one hand and losses of domestic wastewater on the other hand. The objective of this work package is to give answers to question such as : What percentage of domestic wastewater reaches the system ? Or what determines the amount of drainage water in house connections?
The project is concentrate on on a very local scale, it is investigate individual house connections or small catchement with few house connections. Three different areas (historical centre, modern block of flats, residential area. In the first step the structural state of several connections in each area will be examined with the help of TV cameras in order to find the leaks and their causes e.g. cracks, orrosion. The infiltration to house connections can be quantified e.g. by volumetric method. The infiltration from house connections can be quantified e.g. by pressure drop in time after stopping the connection at the downstream end. Measuring in situ is supported by work on the laboratory test rig.
The aim of project will be to check the plausibility of statistical scaling up with field tests in larger catchments. The tools for this are water balances for closed regions, combining monitoring of drinking water input. The balances will enable to improve the model developed in the first part and to involve other possibility relevant parameters ( traffic density , groundwater level, type of around soil etc.)