Urban Water Systems

The vast majority of the world’s population today is living in an urbanized environment and the trend of people moving to cities continues to grow. Thus a large proportion of human water consumption and waste­water discharge occurs in urban space.

Raw or treated water, often supplied from remote sources, is frequently stored in urban supply areas to serve as a buffer at times of peak demand or inter­ruption of bulk supply, before being distri­buted to consumers through (mostly) pumped network systems.

For modern water distri­bution systems, it is essential to make water of suffi­cient quality, quantity and pressure available at all times. Today, substantial water losses caused by aging supply networks jeopardize the supply relia­bility and increase the supply costs. ILF is committed to working with clients around the world to tackle leakage and employ the latest know-how in efficient supply concepts and techno­logies to make the most out of the world’s precious fresh water resources.

When it comes to collecting waste­water, either in dedicated separate systems or together with storm­water in combined systems, ILF can draw on decades of experience – be it for master plans, feasi­bility studies or complex system designs. In addition to the design of new systems, incre­a­singly signi­ficant public and private invest­ments target the expansion and rehabi­li­tation of existing sewer systems with the goal of maximizing the use of available system components.

But Urban Water is not just about the human demand for potable water and the resulting generation of waste­water, it is incre­a­singly about the management of rain water and speci­fi­cally extreme surface runoff. Conven­tional combined or separate drainage systems have for long suffi­ci­ently addressed the capturing and safe assimi­lation of this water into the environment. However, the rapid expansion of imper­vious surfaces in combi­nation with the widely observed change in weather patterns that has resulted in greater rainfall inten­sities and durations now neces­sitate alter­native approaches. Hence, ILF is promoting integrated surface water management in urban environ­ments – local ground infil­tration, decen­tra­lized retention in cities and safe routing through urban agglo­me­ra­tions. To this end ILF employs the latest 1D/2D coupled modeling technology to make urban space both safe and livable.

Fields of Expertise:

Water Supply:

• Spring catchment structures
• Wells
• Reser­voirs and tanks
• Pumping stations
• Water distri­bution networks
• Trenchless construction methods
• Non-revenue water reduction
• Infra­st­ructure rehabilitation

Integrated Urban Drainage:

• Data collection – documen­tation of events, drone surveys, flow measu­re­ments, water quality sampling, sewer inspection
• Data processing and management – GIS, BIM, Sewer databases/register/information system

• Hydrology (rainfall runoff modelling)

• Sewer system modelling (1D-Modelling)

• Hydro­dy­namic surface runoff modelling

• Urban flood modelling (coupled 1D-2D modelling)

• Pluvial flood hazard maps and flood risk management

• Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS)

• Decen­tra­lized storm­water management

• Storm­water treatment and infil­tration facilities

• Ground water modelling (3D-modelling)

Waste­water Collection:

• Sewage pumping stations
• Combined and separate sewer systems
• Combined sewer overflows (CSOs)
• Trenchless construction methods
• Infra­st­ructure rehabilitation