Copenhagen, a city becoming resilient to flooding

Through its Danish subsidiary Krüger, Veolia deploys solutions to turn Copenhagen into a flood resilient city. A modelling and management tool was developed to prevent the discharge of wastewater into the environment during stormy weather.
 

Krüger has been helping local authorities renovate the wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure for the last 20 years. The Group’s subsidiary developedSURface Flood Forecast (SURFF), a real-time monitoring tool to control wastewater networks and treatment plants based on weather conditions.
 
A smart, scalable solution
SURFF is able to warn about the risk of heavy rainfall several hours ahead, and can pinpoint the city zones vulnerable to flooding. The system therefore gives the local authorities enough time to implement the necessary security measures. Simultaneously, the software switches the wastewater treatment plants to a "heavy rainfall” mode, which temporarily increases their treatment capacity to avoid blockages and overflows.
 

Following the implementation of the SURFF tool, the quality of harbor waters improved significantly.  The number of wastewater overflows decreased by 90% in one year, and a third of the pollution linked to the presence of wastewater was removed. Thanks to its modularity, SURFF also reduced the energy needed for wastewater treatment by 10 to 15%, thus decreasing by 10 to 12% greenhouse gas emissions.

Key figures illustrating solution deployment and results