Berlin

Challenges and objectives

The urban water cycle is partially closed and challenged intensively by competing uses and pressures such as:

drinking water production
discharges of stormwater and treated wastewater
combined sewer overflow (CSO)
recreational purposes

The objectives for Berlin are to:

improve the performance of the sewer and drinking water infrastructure
foster public involvement in urban water management

Therefore, several innovations will reduce the environmental impacts of the sewer network. The work will focus on illicit connections, combined sewer overflows and optimizing the maintenance and planning of water wells.

Activities

digital-water.city is developing in Berlin the following digital solutions:

an innovative application to support data collection, sharing and visualisation of the operation of drinking water wells
a digital solution to track hotspots of illicit connections
a new generation of sensors for real-time in-situ bacterial measurements in the river and for Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) monitoring in the sewer system
an augmented Reality (AR) technology to prove the excellent drinking water quality, encourage tap water consumption over bottled water and raise acceptance of citizens for the necessary investments to tackle infrastructure challenges

Support

The activities in Berlin are in line with Berlin’s new political agenda on digitisation and are actively supported by the following associated partners:

Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises (SENEEP)
Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection (SENETC)