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Efficiency and Control of Water Networks
Flood and overflow monitoring is an instrumentation and telemetry solution that measures water level in real time at pumping stations, manholes, collectors, and tanks, generating automatic alarms before an overflow or urban flood occurs. It relies on level sensors — ultrasonic, radar, or hydrostatic pressure — connected to a local RTU that transmits data over a cellular network, radio, or fiber to a central SCADA platform.
The business problem it solves is direct: a lift station or manhole that overflows without warning causes street flooding, contamination of receiving water bodies, damage to road and electrical infrastructure, and exposure to penalties from environmental authorities. Late detection, based on inspection rounds or citizen reports, means response times of hours while the event is already underway.
Key benefits include reduced response time to critical events, less damage to infrastructure and roadways, the ability to activate contingency protocols before an overflow occurs, and historical evidence useful for audits or claims. Organizations implement this type of monitoring because it reduces operational risk, protects service continuity, and supports regulatory compliance around discharges and civil protection.
From a digital transformation perspective, each monitored point generates historical level and event-frequency data that allows infrastructure investment to be prioritized based on evidence rather than intuition
Overflows at pumping stations, manholes, and storage tanks are among the most costly — and most preventable — operational events for a water utility or a municipal public works department. When water level exceeds a structure's design capacity without a prior alert, the result is typically street flooding, damage to homes, contamination of receiving water bodies, and, in many cases, regulatory penalties. A well-designed monitoring solution turns this risk into a manageable event, with minutes or hours of advance warning instead of a reactive response.
How it works. The solution installs level sensors at each critical point in the network: pumping stations, manholes in strategic collectors, and regulation or storage tanks. Measurement technology is selected based on the application — ultrasonic and radar for non-contact measurement in environments with solids or foam, hydrostatic pressure for deep or hard-to-access wells — and connects to an RTU that processes alarm thresholds locally. When a critical level is reached, the RTU immediately transmits the alert over cellular, radio, or fiber to the central SCADA system, which can in turn generate automatic notifications to on-call teams via mobile messaging or email.
Business value. Early detection allows reinforcement pumping to be activated, flows to be diverted, or crews to be mobilized before an overflow occurs, significantly reducing remediation costs compared to responding after the fact. Historical data on level and event frequency at each monitoring point also supports investment decisions for expanding hydraulic capacity, prioritizing public works where actual risk justifies it.
Operational benefits. Beyond reducing material damage, this solution shortens on-call response times, reduces reliance on physical inspection rounds, and generates an auditable record of each event — start time, duration, peak level reached — useful for citizen claims or environmental audits.
Technology overview and integration. Level monitoring integrates natively with SCADA platforms and data historians, and can be complemented with rain gauge stations to correlate rainfall events with network behavior. Through APIs, the data can feed asset management systems (CMMS), geographic information systems (GIS) for territorial risk visualization, and Business Intelligence platforms for executive and regulatory reporting. Communication is secured under industrial cybersecurity schemes that protect the integrity of critical alarms.
Typical applications. Level monitoring at stormwater and sanitary pumping stations, overflow detection in trunk collector manholes, level control in regulation and storage tanks, and monitoring of urban areas with a history of flooding for early activation of civil protection protocols.
Future scalability. A point-based monitoring architecture expands naturally into a watershed- or city-level flood risk management model, incorporating predictive hydraulic models and AI-driven analytics that anticipate network behavior under different rainfall scenarios.
If your organization needs to evaluate where to install level monitoring to prevent flooding and overflow, Marfel's team can help define the right technical scope for your network.