Using Smart City Technology to Create a Smart Lake Willem Rockett and Darryl Hayter (Empower Engineers and Project Managers)

Abstract

Located in Mango Hill, north of Brisbane, the Capestone Lake is a 12.8 Ha Saline Water lake which forms the centrepiece of the Capestone Development. For water quality purposes, the lake also has a pumped saltwater exchange system which takes saltwater flows from the nearby Saltwater Creek and pumps to the head of the lake. Saline water is then pushed through the lake and eventually re-deposited to Saltwater Creek. The initial development application for the Capestone Southern Precinct, in which the lake is located, was submitted in 2004 and approved by Pine Rivers Shire Council (PRSC) in 2007. Although PRSC amalgamated with City of Redcliffe and Shire of Caboolture to form, Moreton Bay Regional Council (MBRC) in 2008, Council have remained heavily involved in the Project. The Operational Works Application for the Capestone Lake was submitted in June 2017 and approved by Council in July 2018. During this time, Empower and MBRC engaged in numerous workshops to address issues and arrive at solutions which would satisfy Councils Planning & Development and Operations and Maintenance teams. For the sake of water quality within the lake, it was proposed to provide a number of monitoring stations within the lake to continuously assess water quality throughout the lifespan of the lake. Key water quality aspects to be monitored were: Dissolved Oxygen, Salinity, pH, Turbidity, Temperature and Algae. The approved design had a proposed telemetry system which provided all information associated with the operation of the pump station to Council via SMS notifications this was a tried and tested software component which met or exceeded all of Council’s operational requirements for monitoring and telemetry. During the construction of the lake, Council advised of their plans to move the lake to the smart city platform which is run through Microsoft Azure. This platform allowed for a number of more “user-friendly” features and synchronisation to the MBRC Smart Cities vision. With the shift to the more intricate software system, Empower and MBRC saw an opportunity to enhance the performance of the lake and use real-time data to predict the lake’s behaviour. Empower and the Electrical design team have engaged in various workshops with software engineers from MBRC to provide an understanding of the outputs of the water quality monitoring within the lake and the key operational criteria for the lake. Conversely Council’s software engineers have provided Empower and the electrical team with the required inputs for the smart cities software. This process has created a shared learning environment from which the lake’s operational protocols have been developed and enhanced and the use of the real time data obtained from monitoring stations has been optimised. This paper shall provide a technical review of the initial lake operational software package, a technical review of the operational software developed in Microsoft Azure, and a critical review of the process by which this came about. It is hoped that by highlighting the process in which this software was developed, similar creative thinking may be assigned to other public works assets.