SMARTER WATER

IBM, DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL

FRANCESCO CALABRESE, JER HAYES, TOM LEAHY, EMANUELE RAGNOLI

Managing a city’s water infrastructure presents significant challenges. Similar in extent to electricity infrastructure, it intends to connect to every house and property. By 2030, it is expected that 60 percent of the world’s population, or nearly five billion people, will live in cities, putting an overwhelming strain on already overburdened water infrastructure. Much of a city’s water infrastructure runs underground, out of sight of the average person. With the support of Dublin City Council, this installation maps data from the water network system in ways that allow visitors to see how water is used through a city infrastructure at different times when demand varies. Differences between working days and non-working days will be shown in order to highlight the impact of people on the city’s water throughout a typical workday – ‘a day in the life of a water distribution network’. The installation is one of the outputs of a set of ongoing projects between Dublin City Council and the IBM Dublin Research Lab as part of the Creative Dublin Alliance Smart Dublin Initiative, making Dublin a City where creativity and innovation thrive.