Editorial
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the third issue of WADI Newsletter. My name is Alexandra Carvalho and I work as Director of planning and engineering at EDIA.
I am writing this editorial from EDIA headquarters, which are located in the city of Beja, in the southern part of Portugal. We are a public company that planned, funded, built and now operates the Alqueva project, a large irrigation project in the Alentejo region.
The Alqueva irrigation network starts at a big reservoir – the Alqueva artificial lake, covering 250 km2 and holding over 3,100 hm3 of water. From here a network of large channels and reservoirs distributes large volumes of water to 120,000 hectares of irrigated farm land. In 2017 we distributed around 400 hm3 of water mainly for agriculture and supplemented water supply for human use in the region, besides assuring environmental best-practices.
EDIA participates in the WADI project as a demonstration site. As we approach the end of the project, we are preparing the demonstration tests in Portugal. These consist of:
- a training workshop to present the WADI methodology as well as traditional leak detection methods to EDIA’s staff and other water utilities in the region;
- a Ground Leak Detection Campaign (GLD) performed with conventional sound-based methods over a sample network;
- an aerial campaign with plane and drone, covering the same sample network as the GLD campaign.
The results of the GLD campaign will serve as benchmark for WADI methodology and will be compared with the outcome of the aerial campaign to evaluate the accuracy of our airborne remote sensing technique.
Besides all of this, we are also pleased to welcome the whole team as our guests for the next project meeting and review taking place in June here in Beja. This will be a chance for us to show our partners the Alqueva project and the Alentejo region.
I hope you will enjoy reading this issue of WADI’s newsletter, which includes an insight article with a focus on ground leak detection methods along with information on the latest scientific publications and presentations at international conferences and news from our community of sister projects.
Should you participate in the ICCS or IGARSS Conferences don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. On the 11th June we will also be attending the ICT4Water Cluster Annual Meeting (more information below).
I invite you to stay up-to-date on our activities by visiting our website and by following the hashtag #WADItech on Twitter.
Alexandra Carvalho
EDIA, S.A.
www.edia.pt