18/01/2005 - On Tuesday
18 January 2005 the Environment Agency’s Midlands
Region takes over a new telemetry system -
an electronic system for monitoring the environment,
which incorporates leading web-style technology.
The new system will help us to expand and
improve our flood forecasting and warning
service, and improve our management of droughts,
pollution and environmental protection.
The new system cost £ 1.3 million in
the Midlands alone. It was supported by funding
from the Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (Defra), largely because
of its benefits for our flood risk service.
It will replace the ageing system currently
in use, enabling us to have faster access
to more accurate and detailed information.
The information we need about our environment
will be delivered automatically when we need
it to displays located in our offices, communications
centres, flood rooms and in Duty Officers’
homes – 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
It will also improve our ability to monitor
and control equipment such as flood defences,
pumps and sluice gates remotely.
All our remote gauging stations, which measure
river levels and flows, and other sites have
already been linked to the new system, and
a programme of training for key staff is under
way. The new system will go fully live on
1 September 2005, although it could be used
now as a back-up system in emergencies.
By working in partnership with our colleagues
in Thames and Wales Regions, we have also
been able to make significant financial savings.
The total cost of the Joint Telemetry Project
across all three regions is £6.7 million.
The final testing and hand-over of the new
system is an important milestone for the Midlands
phase of the contract, which has been undertaken
by Serck Controls Ltd, Coventry. We have also
employed the services of consultants Carl
Bro to work with us, and our contractor teams,
to deliver the system successfully.
Tim Harrison, Midlands Telemetry and Forecasting
Project Team Leader, says:
"Good communications systems and networks
are vital for us as we continue the drive
to improve standards of service across everything
we do. This new system will give us rapid
access to better data to inform our decisions.
"Flooding is a natural event that cannot
be completely prevented, but good preparation
can help people minimise the damage and distress
it can cause. The new system will support
the expansion of the flood warning service
to more people who need it, and improve the
service to those who receive it at the moment."
Notes
Telemetry
Telemetry plays a central and vital role
in what we do. We have been using it for many
years and it is currently used at 4000 sites
across England and Wales to monitor facilities
such as river gauges, rain gauges, tide stations,
climate stations, water quality monitors,
boreholes, air pollution monitors, fish counters,
gate controls and drainage pumps.
We combine the telemetry data with information
from other sources, such as rainfall radar
and weather forecasts and use it to drive
our forecasting models and databases. These
in turn feed our flood warning and information
systems.
The operational data we collect is used by
many parts of our business and is especially
critical to the work we do in Flood Defence,
Water Resources and Water Quality. It provides
vital and timely information on the state
of our river basins and coastlines so that
we can provide better flood warnings, river
management, licensing, regulation and environmental
protection.
It requires large reliable computer systems
to gather the monitored data. Advances in
technology and greater demands on our information
systems have led us to invest in the new telemetry
system.
Some key facts relating to the system and
project are:
The Joint Telemetry Project (JTP) is delivering
new telemetry systems to Environment Agency
Wales, Thames and Midlands.
The new Midlands Telemetry System (MTS) replaces
a number of stand-alone systems, which had
limited functionality and capacity.
The JTP Project is a 5-year project finishing
in April 2005.
The Midlands Region system is costing £1.3
M
The Project has been part funded by Defra.
Carl Bro are the Telemetry Consultants, providing
specialist technical advice and configuration.
They were appointed on the 31 December 2000.
Serck Controls Ltd are the telemetry system
supplier and were awarded the contract on
the 23 December 2001.
The Midlands telemetry system has 555 outstations
connected to it.
There are a total of 1908 sensors monitored
by the telemetry system. These break down
as follows:
- 843 analogue sensors measure river level,
air temperature, borehole level and various
water quality parameters
140 rainfall counter sensors
31 flow counter sensors measuring pipe flow
894 status indicators for security, fire,
mains power and pump on/off etc.
The telemetry system is a business critical
system. It operates on a duty stand-by basis
and is designed to be resilient and fault
tolerant.
The telemetry system can be accessed by duty
officers from home
The telemetry system is an open system, which
allows data to be imported and exported to
internal and external parties.
The telemetry system is web enabled, which
provides access to all staff.
The telemetry system runs on windows 2000.
The telemetry system has 300Gb of storage,
which will enable 10 years worth of data to
be stored on line.
The telemetry system has 94 PSTN lines, which
are used to interrogate the outstations.
All outstations can be interrogated in 15
minutes.
The telemetry system can display pictures
from web cameras.
The telemetry system can display information
as graphs, mimics, pictures and maps.
