Smart Company Project: Aquafin - Water Data Space

Aquafin works towards clean waterways and a living environment in harmony with water. The company treats wastewater for more than 6 million Flemish residents and manages thousands of kilometres of sewer infrastructure. In an operation of this scale, innovation and data are essential. With the support of Sirus, Aquafin is taking an important step towards standardised water data sharing in Flanders.

What was needed?

In Flanders, the ambition to share water quality data more intelligently and efficiently between organisations is growing. That is why various actors active in water management – such as Aquafin, VMM, drinking water companies, the Flemish Department of Environment, and research institutions like imec and VITO – are jointly supporting the Flemish Water Data Space: a shared set of agreements (legal, organisational and technical) that enables water-related data to be published and consumed in a standardised way.

For Aquafin, the Water Data Space provides an opportunity to set up a first specific data flow: sensor data on combined sewer overflows. These overflows – emergency structures that allow wastewater to be discharged into a watercourse when the sewer network is overloaded – are currently one of the last major obstacles to improving water quality. By sharing the data captured by overflow sensors in a standardised and transparent way, the wider network of water stakeholders gains better insight into the problem and potential solutions.

What Sirus provided

The project started with a series of exploratory workshops between Aquafin and Sirus. During these sessions, we examined which data was available to be shared, how that data could be brought together, and how to ensure the data quality was sufficient to tell a meaningful story. This iterative approach formed the foundation for the subsequent technical work.

Sirus then set up a technical data pipeline that converts overflow data into standardised data streams. These data streams – shared via LDES – comply with the semantic and technical agreements within the Water Data Space and can easily be shared with and consulted by other partners active in water management, in particular VMM.

In addition to the technical implementation, Sirus also built Blue Portal: a user-friendly portal that visualises the sensor data. A gateway for Aquafin’s open data policy. Users can click on a sensor and immediately consult the most recent information. This makes complex data accessible and usable for non-technical profiles as well. For the UX design of Blue Portal, we collaborated with Little Miss Robot. The use case concerning overflow data was the first case to use Blue Portal.

Technicalities of the project

This project was set up according to the principles of the Flemish Smart Data Space, an initiative of Digitaal Vlaanderen.

The implementation model is maximally aligned with the OSLO Water Quality model and follows the SSN/SOSA standard as closely as possible
Data is made available via Linked Data Event Streams (LDES)
Sirus developed an additional reusable data connector that automatically translates linked data into a database, allowing data to be visualised immediately, for example in Power BI. This component complements the existing VSDS components provided by Digitaal Vlaanderen

Microsoft Power BI
Azure Functions
Azure Eventhuns
Postgress
MS SQL
On Premise
Kubernetes
Java development
Terraform

Did you know that we also published our full methodology on a GitHub? On this GitHub, not only Sirus but also organisations such as the City of Bruges and VMM make their exact data-sharing approach publicly available. This allows other organisations active in overflow management and water management to follow the same steps, ensuring that everything related to overflows within the Water Data Space is presented in a consistent way.

What's next?

This overflow use case is one of the projects within a broader ambition: a shared Water Data Space in which multiple organisations publish and consume water data in a uniform way. The technical infrastructure is in place, and further extensions are possible, including other types of water data.

What did our Sirus developers think?

“Data spaces are a frequent topic of discussion, and many proof-of-concepts have been created. What made this project stand out was bringing a concrete use case into production. We were able to fully apply our technical expertise in standardisation to a socially relevant challenge.”

Portret van Greet - Team Lead van het M365 team bij Sirus.

Greet Brosens Enterprise Architect and Data Spaces Specialist at Sirus

“I found this project particularly interesting because combined sewer overflows were entirely new to me, and I always enjoy learning about real-world issues. Paired with a technology I see as highly promising for interoperability and for making public data genuinely accessible, this assignment turned out to be extremely engaging.”

Bram Verdonck Technical Lead and Data Specialist