From a legal point of view, Emschergenossenschaft (EG) and Lippeverband (LV) are two public-law corporations with comparable statutory tasks. We have been pooling our expertise for more than 90 years now and are the largest wastewater disposal company and operator of sewage treatment plants in Germany. What unites us above all is the common goal of creating ecologically, technically and creatively convincing solutions at Emscher and Lippe – in the region and for the region.

1.

Challenge Introduction

Optimization and / or automatization of conspicuity analysis at discharge sections of rainwater treatment plants

2.

Challenge Details

As part of our activities at EGLV we are also active in the field of rainwater treatment. Basically, precipitation leads to a mixture of rainwater and wastewater, which together form so-called “mixed water”. If a certain limit value of mixed water is exceeded, a so-called discharge situation occurs, which leads to the mixed water being fed into rainwater treatment plants via discharge routes. The problem here is that the mixed water contains other substances in addition to rainwater and wastewater, which can settle at the point of discharge of the process and even damage it. We are obliged to check the condition of the discharge points after each precipitation and to carry out an assessment based on specified criteria. At the moment, this is done manually, with employees driving to the appropriate discharge points after each precipitation situation. In order to speed up and automate this process of evaluation, we are looking for a solution in the field of image recognition and associated AI, which can recognize the inventory of the discharge points on the basis of images and evaluate them accordingly. The goal is to significantly reduce the number of assignments for manual status recording and evaluation by employees. We can provide appropriate image material as well as a catalogue of criteria for evaluating the condition as part of the processing of the challenge.