Already trialled at three of Canal & River Trust’s reservoirs
The Canal & River Trust has signed an agreement for a subscription to the newly-launched iDMS tool, which combines Binnies’ reservoir expertise and digital ecosystem services with Rezatec’s geospatial artificial intelligence techniques to monitor critical reservoir infrastructure. The system will deliver improvements in reservoir safety while enhancing operating efficiency.
iDMS, which is being trialled by the Canal & River Trust at three of its reservoirs, identifies the basal rhythm of the dams by combining historic satellite data with advanced analytics, using Binnies’ technical expertise. The tool then monitors future movement of the dams and reports on any anomalous changes that could indicate a problem. This remote and scalable solution works to millimetre accuracy, Binnies claimed, and identifies additional possible failure indicators such as changes in vegetation moisture and vigour, which may indicate seepage.
David Prisk, reservoir asset manager of Canal & River Trust, said: “The Canal & River Trust welcomes innovative and promising technologies that enable us to proactively manage our assets, and we are looking forward to working with Binnies and Rezatec on this project to support us in meeting our strategic objectives.”
Canal & River Trust is the holder of the guardianship of 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, together with reservoirs and a wide range of buildings and structures in England and Wales.
These new data sets bring an improved perspective, insights and enhanced resilience to reservoir asset health monitoring. The data will be used to provide a more detailed risk profile, to prioritise future investment, and to enable focused operational activity to improve reservoir safety.
Rachel Pether, all reservoirs panel engineer at Binnies, added: “We will be reviewing the information collected with great interest as it will give the reservoir industry a much-enhanced understanding of both routine dam movement and potentially anomalous movement, which may be the precursor of a dam safety incident.”
iDMS is part of Binnies’ digital ECO-X suite of products, its cloud-based ecosystem, that enables integration of multiple data sets across multiple partners, such as Rezatec. It provides asset management tools that fit with utility clients’ IT systems.
