New Zealand city of Tauranga selected by the Swedish Innovation Agency for an international pilot

©DHI

After an international search under the Go Global pilots, the Swedish Innovation Agency (VINNOVA) selected Tauranga City Council as one of two water utilities to receive funding for implementing DHI’s Future City Flow outside of Sweden.

Future City Flow is a cloud-based decision support system that addresses multiple challenges utilities are facing in planning and operating wastewater systems. By integrating the visualisation of environmental and operational data, quantifying capacity issues and evaluating cost-benefit of various improvement measures, utilities finally have a tool that can help them meet their KPIs and plan for growth. Moreover, Future City Flow empowers water utilities to effectively operate networks in real-time. Thus, reducing the risk of uncontrolled overflows. Future City Flow is developed by DHI and is currently being implemented in Sweden. The Go Global international pilots will establish if benefits demonstrated with Swedish clients are achievable globally. The pilots will identify improvements to the platform in order to expand its usability.
 
Enhancing strategic planning activities
As a partner in the Go Global project, Tauranga City Council will be piloting the planning of the Future City Flow platform. The expected benefits for Tauranga City include gaining insight into capacity issues in the wastewater network now and in the future, ability to test a range of possible measures to resolve I&I issues and quantify their cost-benefit indicators. The implementation of the Future City Flow platform will enhance strategic planning activities focused on maximising network utilisation to defer significant capital expenditure. It will also assist with the ongoing renewals and rainfall inflow and rain/groundwater infiltration programmes. Tauranga City is focusing on reducing peak flows in the network as it strives to achieve environmental objectives within affordability constraints and under growth pressures.   

The City of Gold Coast in Australia was also selected to receive funding from VINNOVA. The funding is for a pilot of the real-time control module in Future City Flow. Tauranga City and the City of Gold Coast will work together to share benefits and experiences from the two implementations.

The total budget for both projects is approximately NZD 2,200,000.

The project delivery partners are Tauranga City Council (New Zealand), City of Gold Coast (Australia), DHI (Sweden, Australia and New Zealand), Divine Robot AB (Sweden), Sweden Water Research (Sweden) and Rhetikfabriken (Sweden).

About Tauranga
Tauranga is an urban centre located in the Western Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. The city is built around its hills and harbour and is experiencing a period of rapid growth. The population is projected to expand from 140,800 in 2018 to 197,700 in 2045. Tauranga is also an important economic hub supporting the New Zealand economy with a nationally significant port, vibrant local businesses and tourism.