Instrumentation, control and automation in the water industry – state-of-the-art and new challenges G. Olsson Dept. of Industrial Electrical Engineering and Automation (IEA), Lund University, P.O. Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden (E-mail: Gustaf.Olsson@iea.lth.se) Abstract Instrumentation, control and automation (ICA) are key technologies in modern water and wastewater systems. Ever present disturbances make it necessary to automatically attenuate their consequences. A wastewater treatment system is load driven, while a water distribution system is demand driven. Despite the variability the system outputs have to be satisfactory. Economic realities encourages the application of ICA to make a maximum use of plant capacities. An increasing complexity of competing processes in a modern nutrient removal plant makes more elaborate control necessary. The final goal of protecting the environmental resources necessitates an integrated view of several interdependent systems, the collection, transport and treatment processes. In this integrating development ICA will be a decisive technology. Keywords Automation; control; instrumentation; integration Introduction In this conference we meet in a research and development community with the goal of universal access to clean water and sanitation. This challenge has to be met in a local context. The environmental problems are still great in many industrialized countries and the water resources are getting increasingly scarce. In the developing countries billions of people still lack the luxury of clean and safe water. The United Nations has set up the goal to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drink- ing water and basic sanitation (United Nations, 2004). Within the European Union the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) have been formulated and decided and include great challenges like: † Funding infrastructure in the developing world; † Community-based water resources management models and support tools; † Translating indigenous knowledge to applied technology; † Affordable water supply and sanitation systems for developing countries. The solutions to these challenges have to be flexible. The MDG have to lead to implemen- tations of capacity building to promote technological ingenuity in developing countries and the appropriate technology has to be transferred to the developing countries. We drink the same water as the dinosaurs. The molecules have just been recycled a number of times. It is our task to make sure that clean water will still be within reach. The solution to the enormous water challenge is certainly a combination of politics, econ- omy, attitudes and technology. Here we can carefully check what technology – and in particular ICA – can do to make sure that the quality of water distribution and waste- water treatment is enhanced and guaranteed. Drivers for change Increased urbanization, population growth and living standards have been major drivers in the increase of urban water use in the past century. The amount of urban water use doi: 10.2166/wst.2006.097 Water Science & Technology Vol 53 No 4–5 pp 1–16 Q IWA Publishing 2006 1 Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/wst/article-pdf/53/4-5/1/432344/1.pdf by guest on 22 May 2020