Southern Water is trialling smart technology using Artificial Intelligence to protect the environment against overflows during heavy rainfall.

Heavy rain events mean drains and Southern Water's sewers and wastewater treatment system sometimes struggle to cope.

In the worst cases, flooding from sewers may occur, in less severe instances a mixture of wastewater and surface water can overflow from the storage wells at the water company’s waste pumping stations. The storm overflows are permitted by the Environment Agency under these circumstances and are required to prevent flooding.

Southern Water is now looking at ways of minimising these overflows by using smart technology to provide advance warning and reduce the chances of overflows by pumping out the wells to give as much headroom as possible.

The water company is taking part in trials of the StormHarvester system which can reduce the chance of overflows by as much as 80%.

Using artificial intelligence, StormHarvester's short to medium term rainfall prediction system allows waste networks to take advantage of every litre of capacity in the system. Action is taken well before it starts raining, enabling the network to adequately prepare for extra run-off and so prevent flooding.

The StormHarvester control centre receives location-specific rainfall predictions from the Met Office or satellite images. The controller receives the alerts and predictions of rainfall amounts, and also knows the safe operating levels of tanks, wells and chambers. It then automatically starts pumps, and opens and closes valves.

Paul Kent, Wastewater Strategy Manager at Southern Water said that suitable sites are now being selected ahead of the rainier weather in the autumn.