IOT Services Sustainable Drainage

THE CHALLENGE

Peter­bor­ough lies with­in two river catch­ments and in the middle of three con­trast­ing geo­lo­gic­al areas. To the west is undu­lat­ing land­scape of free drain­ing soils over lime­stone, low-lying Fen areas are to the north and east with clays pre­dom­in­antly to the south. The River Wel­land runs from west to east in the north, wth the River Nene dis­sect­ing the urb­an area and run­ning in the same dir­ec­tion to the south. This geo­graphy, com­bined with the impact of cli­mate change bring­ing an increase in heavy down­pours, has caused our city to become vul­ner­able to sur­face flood­ing affect­ing res­id­ents, busi­ness and motor­ists. Peter­bor­ough City Council’s Sus­tain­able Drain­age team needed to find a bet­ter way to pre­dict and then man­age the impact of flash flood­ing.

THE SOLUTION

Har­ness­ing the power of the Inter­net of Things and imple­ment­ing sensors across the city is allow­ing bet­ter man­age­ment of flood risk.

The sensor net­work provides data to enable experts to intel­li­gently pre­dict when rising river levels may res­ult in road flood­ing. This means that tar­geted inter­ven­tions such as respon­se teams and traf­fic man­age­ment can be bet­ter planned and imple­men­ted more quickly in times of heavy rain­fall.