Context
The Po River Basin District, encompassing over a quarter of Italy’s territory and home to 17 million inhabitants, is crucial to the nation’s economy. AIPo (Agenzia Interregionale per il Po), the Interregional Agency for the Po River, is a government body tasked with safeguarding this area from floods and managing river navigation. AIPo, with its 13 offices spread across four regions, oversees the complex hydrographic network of the Po basin. Their core responsibilities include maintaining riverbanks, managing water rights, intervening during floods and enabling river navigation.
Objectives
A critical aspect of AIPo’s mission is flood preparedness and response. To achieve this, they have implemented a sophisticated hydraulic and remote-control monitoring system. This system is vital for managing the vast network under AIPo’s jurisdiction and integrates with civil defence efforts throughout the region.
The system acquires data from sensors strategically positioned throughout the basin. This data is then transmitted via radio networks or directly managed by AIPo for the Mincio River network. The sensor types include hydrometers, piezometers, gauge position sensors and auxiliary sensors for temperature and diagnostics. Data is retrieved from the acquisition stations at regular intervals and disseminated through web portals and services. The system also facilitates data sharing with other monitoring networks within the Po basin, providing crucial information for flood forecasting models.
Implementation
To comply with Italian digitalisation regulations and enhance management of the IT infrastructure, AIPo is migrating the system to cloud-based solutions offered by certified data centres. Cloud computing offers secure data storage with automatic backups, eliminating the need for physical infrastructure maintenance and reducing hardware/software-related issues.
A recent innovation allows stakeholders and citizens to access real-time processed data through free, publicly available platforms such as Aegis. Beyond monitoring, the system triggers alerts via SMS, email, phone calls and soon, instant messaging and XML-CAP standard messages, when predefined thresholds are exceeded.