Leuphana involved in new Future Lab Water
2022-09-23 Lüneburg/Oldenburg. The Lower Saxony Future Lab Water has now started its work at the Center for Digital Innovations Lower Saxony (ZDIN). The facility pursues the goal of making water management sustainable, resource-conserving and efficient. The Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture and the Volkswagen Foundation are funding the lab with 3.7 million euros for five years. Leuphana University Lüneburg is involved in the project with a sub-project.
The Leuphana scientists Prof. Dr. Jens Heger and Marvin Hempel from the Institute for Product and Process Innovation are working on coastal drainage, irrigation and energy optimization. They are contributing their findings and experience from the Schöpfwerk 4.0 project, which aims to create cost- and CO2-optimized flow plans for pumping stations. To do this, the researchers take into account data from a wide variety of sources, which they use to calculate mathematically optimized operating plans for the plants. The annual energy consumption of such plants is not trivial: For example, the pumping stations in the area of the Kehdingen maintenance association on the Lower Elbe alone consume up to 3 million kilowatt hours of energy annually.
When handing over the funding notification in Oldenburg, Science Minister Björn Thümler emphasized: "In order to face the increasingly frequent situations of scarcity and abundance, we need, not least, intelligent water management. This can only be successful with advanced digital tools such as artificial intelligence methods." He said he is very pleased that the relevant scientific players in Lower Saxony have joined forces in the ZDIN's Future Lab Water.
The project consortium of the Future Lab Water includes nine scientific institutions and numerous practice partners. The disciplines represented include water management, hydraulic engineering, hydrology, coastal engineering, environmental systems science, computer science, sensor technology, and planning and political sciences. Geographically, the applying institutions cover the state of Lower Saxony from the coast to the inland to the Harz low mountain region. The spokesperson of the Future Lab is Prof. Dr. Oliver Zielinski from Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg.