PUB’s Active, Beautiful, Clean (ABC) Waters Programme at Alexandra Canal also named winner in the Design category

 

Singapore, 3 July 2012 – PUB, Singapore’s national water agency’s innovative automated water quality monitoring system, the “Fish Activity Monitoring System” (FAMS), has won the Honour Award (Applied Research category) at the International Water Association (IWA) Asia Pacific Regional Project Innovation Awards 2012.

 

As part of its water quality monitoring regime, in addition to the comprehensive physical and chemical analysis, PUB uses fishes to monitor water quality at its waterworks and service reservoirs to ensure a safe supply of drinking water. Using video analytics technology, FAMS is able to analyse fish motion activities to identify signs of distress, and abnormal fish activity patterns which indicate changes in water quality, and trigger alerts to the operators.

 

Previously, the fishes were monitored using remote video cameras and this required substantial manpower . The video footages also did not provide the intelligence to automatically alert the operators of irregularities in the fishes behaviour. With FAMS, monitoring of fish activities is now fully automated and centralised, with an island-wide network of fish tanks monitored round-the-clock from one central control centre. The use of FAMS thus allows easier management and effective tracking of water quality at great scalability.

 

FAMS is jointly developed by PUB and the Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). It is one of the 348 R&D projects that PUB has carried out together with the local water research community. These research projects cover diverse domains such as water monitoring and treatment, membrane technology, biomimicry and low energy seawater desalination.

 

“FAMS is an excellent example of how, through research, we can uncover more innovative solutions to improve the efficiency and reliability of the water monitoring process. We welcome water companies and research institutions to collaborate with PUB on novel research ideas and test-bed their new technologies and solutions at our facilities,” said Mr Harry Seah, Chief Technology Officer at PUB.

 

To promote R&D efforts in Singapore, the Environment and Water Industry Programme Office (EWI) was set up in 2006 to spearhead the growth of Singapore’s water industry and develop Singapore as an R&D base for environment and water solutions. With a cumulative research funding of S$470 million, the EWI drives the development of the water sector through attracting investments to Singapore, facilitating R&D collaborations and opportunities for test-bedding, as well as helping companies to secure projects and reach out to the global water market. 

 

At present, 42 units of FAMS have been installed at PUB’s various installations across Singapore. FAMS is licensed to ZWEEC Analytics Pte Ltd for further commercialisation beyond Singapore.

 

Besides FAMS, another PUB project – the Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme at Alexandra Canal – has won its designer, CH2M Hill Singapore Pte Ltd, the Winner award in the Design category. Introduced in 2006, the ABC Waters Programme has been transforming Singapore’s comprehensive network of drains, canals and rivers into beautiful streams, rivers and lakes and integrates its water bodies with the parks and green spaces to create new community spaces.

 

Established in 2006, the IWA Project Innovation Awards aims to recognise excellence and innovation in water engineering projects throughout the world. The awards were presented this evening at a ceremony held during the Singapore International Water Week 2012.

 

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About PUB

PUB is a statutory board under the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources. It is the water agency that manages Singapore’s water supply, water catchment and used water in an integrated way.

 

About PUB’s tagline: Water for All: Conserve, Value, Enjoy

PUB has ensured a diversified and sustainable supply of water for Singapore with the Four National Taps (local catchment water, imported water, NEWater, desalinated water).

To provide water for all, PUB calls on all to play our part to conserve water, keep our water catchments and waterways clean and build a relationship with water so we can enjoy our water resources.  If we all play our part, we can have enough water for all our needs – for industry, for living, for life. 

 

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