Consortium 1 North Tuscany
Telecontrol and monitoring

Consortium 1 North Tuscany plays an essential role in water management of the large territory within the Tuscany region. This territory is characterized by the presence of flat areas in the coastal area which are crossed by streams coming from the mountainous and hilly areas. This type of relief suffers from the insistence of frequent local storm events with very high rainfall intensities (even over 200 mm per hour) which create a high risk of rapid flooding with serious consequences. In addition to this, in order to keep a part of the territory dry throughout the year, it is essential to keep the level in the network of reclamation channels significantly lower than sea level.

To guarantee the water safety of the area, all the components of the consortium network, which include numerous water pumping systems, sluice gates, expansion tanks, must function perfectly 24 hours a day, guaranteeing the maximum reliability of each component.

Obviously achieving this result without the use of modern monitoring and remote control systems is not possible. The solution developed by SIAP+Micros has characteristics that make it unique and efficient, including:

• The “symbiotic” use of the classic approach with environmental monitoring systems coupled with the architecture of industrial control systems, which allows both environmental parameters (such as hydrological levels, rainfall intensity, etc.) and electrical components to be kept under control -mechanical (such as pumps, sluice gates, etc.).
• Total redundancy, starting from double level sensors in the most critical points, communication vectors (2 radio channels and the GSM network) in redundancy up to the fail-safe clusters in the 2 primary centers of the network operating in “disaster recovery” mode (thanks to which, in the event of any problem with one centre, the other takes over automatically without interruption of service).
• Versatility towards the objects to be controlled remotely (for example, among the dewatering plants included in the system there are some, built more than 100 years ago, where pumps are installed that remain in operation for more than 70-80 years, but at the same time there they are already more recently built systems, controlled by latest generation PLCs.In the midst of these “extremes” there is a wide range of systems with various local automation technologies (relay, electronic of different generations).SIAP+Micros has created a unique solution, adaptable for each type of plant
  The use of the system gives the consortium the tool, which i) continuously monitors all the critical parameters of each component of the consortium’s network generating warnings and alarms for each anomaly or malfunction, ii) gives the visual control of the situation on each important plant in real time, iii) allows, if necessary, to bypass the local automation of the system and take control of it remotely.