Flanders together with many other regions in Europa has suffered
through one of its driest summers in history and this will unfortunately
not be a singular event. To ensure sufficient water availability for all
actors in the Flemish region (drinking water, agriculture, industry…), we
need to significantly increase the resilience of our water management
through optimization of existing infrastructures, stimulation of circular
water practices and strategic investments in new infrastructure.
However, water management is inherently a very complex subject
touching many different actors and covering a large spatial scale.
Building water resilience thus requires a decision making tool which is
able to incorporate this complexity in order to support holistic decisions
that can balance multiple objectives. However, bringing available data
and modelling tools together over different scales and application
domains to address high level technological or societal challenges is not
possible with tools that are currently available.
This project will use methodologies based on semantic web standards.
More specifically, data standards, a ontology model and a dynamic
knowledge graph will be developed as a way to encode and structure
knowledge and as such create a standardized and holistic structure of
the water domain. The knowledge graph will be dynamic so it can be
continuously populated with new data (sensor data, design data,
simulation data) and integration of predictive models and optimization
algorithms will be foreseen within its structure allowing for the analysis
of holistic scenarios to support decision making. Knowledge graphs can
be built in a modular way creating a lot of flexibility for future
developments/updates. Since they are based on standardized web
semantics they can be easily queried (used to answer questions).
Moreover their standardized form also allows coupling to other sectors
(such as energy) for cross-domain decision making.