Low Cost Gully Monitoring
Over the last number of years we have seen an increase in flooding events across the Dublin region often caused by a combination of factors such as overflowing riverbanks, coastal storms or blocked or overloaded drainage ditches. With over 55,000 gullies across the city Dublin City Council needed a more efficient way of understanding which gullies are flooding or about to flood, so they could respond more quickly and reduce its impact.
Project Objectives
As part of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Programme, Dublin City Council and Enterprise Ireland launched the Gully Monitoring Challenge in 2017 to seek innovative solutions that could improve local authority responses to flooding. The aim was to use technology to maximise the use of limited resources by monitoring gullies, especially in high risk areas.
Phase 1 of this project saw six companies; Blenheim, Carra, MJB Innovation, mSemicon, Voguetek and Danalto, test, trial and develop sensor products that monitor water levels within gullies and report on flooding incidents. Working closely with the Dublin City Council’s Gully Monitoring team, the solutions were assessed and three companies secured funding for Phase 2. The success of the project resulted in an extension of Phase 2 whereby Dublin City Council continued to work with companies Danalto and mSemicon to develop 50 bespoke, low-cost gully sensors.
These sensors are now being deployed in targeted areas across the Docklands. The sensors monitor whether a gully is clear or about to flood. Using a low powered wide area network they send information back to the Council to shows the status of the gully e.g. clear or about to flood on a dashboard. The detection of a blocked gully will trigger an alert to the Council’s Gully Monitoring team allowing them to deploy resources to remedy the flood. Having a view all of the gullies on one dashboard, the Council can better manage operations through real time data and predictive analytics.
“Through the SBIR challenge we now have fully working prototypes deployed across Dublin – we never expected to be at the point where we would be deploying low cost sensors that provide real time data from the hostile and grim environment of a Dublin gully.” – Roy O Donnell, Gully Manager, Dublin City Council
Project Outcomes
- Real-time information allows local authorities to prioritise resource deployment to the areas that need it most.
- More efficient responses to flooding gullies will reduce its impacts such as number of road closures.
- Through collecting information about when drains are about to flood, the Council can use predictive analytics creating a more efficient pre-emptive clearing schedule
- The benefits of developing solutions through a pre-commercial procurement process, such as the SBIR programme, has allowed for front-line local authority staff to co-create solutions to this challenge.
Find out more here