ENVIRONMENT & WATER ENGINEERING
PUB boosts flood response capabilities A slew of new initiatives have been rolled out. As climate change brings about more frequent and intense rainfall that could temporarily overwhelm the country’s drainage capacity, the ability to forecast and monitor impending heavy storms becomes more important than ever. PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, has recently doubled the number of X-band radars to six, creating a more robust monitoring network with greater coverage and improving the accuracy of rainfall measurements and forecasts. X-band radars provide precipitation data at high temporal and spatial resolution, which will enable PUB to issue public alerts and deploy resources to potential flood locations in a timelier manner. To further boost PUB’s flood monitoring capabilities, the Catchment and Waterways Operations System (CWOS) for real-time monitoring of reservoir and drainage operations has been expanded to also capture and include all flood-related data from across the island (from water level sensors, flood response vehicle locations, CCTV cameras and rainfall forecasts), on a single platform. This integrated dashboard greatly enhances monitoring efforts at PUB’s Joint Operations Centre (JOC). The Catchment and Waterways Operations Systems was first implemented in November 2016 for real-time monitoring of reservoir and drainage operations in the Marina Catchment. Quick response time is crucial before and during flash flood incidents. A fleet of 13 new flood response vehicles, modified according to PUB’s requirements, is now equipped with features such as GPS trackers and pan-tilt-zoom cameras to stream real-time vehicle location and flood conditions on the road to PUB’s JOC. These enhancements enable PUB to better coordinate the vehicles’ deployment remotely, direct and assign the response 24
THE SINGAPORE ENGINEER January 2022
PUB officers monitor data from across the island round-the-clock, at the Joint Operations Centre (JOC), and alert the relevant teams quickly in the event of a flash flood.
PUB has unveiled a fleet of 13 dedicated flood response vehicles which are built for driving through floodwaters of up to 700 mm.
