Team

Tailoring existing water supply systems to prospective requirements, which are mainly driven by urbanisation, while making use of the already developed TOR (Technical Operations Research) methodology is part of the research in the mathematical modelling field.

Water supply in the ever-expanding cities is an integral part of the infrastructure, as it provides water for habitants, industries, agriculture and furthermore often for power generation. Already today, a majority of 55% of the world population lives in cities. According to predictions made by the United Nations, urbanisation as well as population growth will lead to a further increase of the urban population making up 68% of the population and therefore additional 2.5 billion people will live in cities until 2050. Moreover, UNESCO estimates a rise in the world’s water demand by 30%. This raises the proposed research question of how the structure as well as the dimension of water supply systems have to be adapted to capture this trend.

The uncertainty of the water demand in cities is to be governed by evaluating free available datasets with machine learning methods and by making use of mathematical optimisation algorithms water supply systems are to be designed. Herein, adapting existing structures by constructional measures as well as by incorporating actuators and sensors is of particular interest.