The Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium and BCAM will collaborate to optimize water supply management

• Both entities will collaborate in order to develop statistical models that contribute to maximise the guarantee of supply resources and minimise operating costs
• In the development of the project, data from the main supply system of Gran Bilbao, the Zadorra and Ordunte reservoirs, will be analysed and optimisation algorithms will be applied to help make decisions
• The agreement has been promoted by BCAM’s Knowledge Transfer Unit (KTU), a platform that aims to develop mathematical solutions to scientific challenges based on real-life applications and to collaborate with industry

The Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium and the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics - BCAM have signed an agreement to collaborate on a project that will contribute to the optimum management of water supply in the province's primary network. This agreement has been promoted by BCAM’s Knowledge Transfer Unit (KTU), a platform that aims to develop mathematical solutions to scientific challenges based on real-life applications and to collaborate with industry.

Water supply is one of the main competences of the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium and includes the functions of collection or lighting, reservoir, transport, treatment and conduction to large end-users or to the head tanks of the distribution network. The main objective of the project in collaboration between the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium and BCAM is the study and development of statistical methods for the analysis of the historical series of the contributions to the main water supply systems in Bilbao: the Zadorra and Ordunte reservoirs. To this end, statistical methods will be developed to optimise the management of resources in the supply network to assist decision-making in order to guarantee maximum supply.

The project has been structured in two phases. In the first, time-series statistical methods will be developed for the prediction of the total volume of contributions to the Zadorra and Ordunte systems, as well as the validation of the predictions both individually and jointly and taking into account factors such as historical trends or seasonality. The model developed in the first phase will be used to tackle phase two, where a methodology will be developed for the optimisation of the guarantee of supply that allows optimum decision-making for the exploitation of water resources between the Zadorra and Ordunte systems.

The research team involved in this project is part of the Applied Statistics group at BCAM, which has extensive experience in the development and implementation of statistical models in sectors as diverse as biostatistics, environmental modelling, ecology, epidemiology or data analysis in sport.

About the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium

The Water Consortium is the entity responsible for the primary network management of both the drinking water supply and the wastewater treatment of approximately one million inhabitants of Bizkaia. It is made up of 81 municipalities, in addition to the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Basque Government. Research and innovation are strategic activities which cut across its management, with the aim of achieving the continuous improvement of all processes and offering a better service to citizens.

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