SRB-XXL Full Final Thesis.Pdf
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Abstract A recurring situation many people all over the globe are facing these days, is climate change. Two problems climate change is responsible for that affect the Netherlands (among other countries), is the increase of extreme precipitation and arid summers. Due to the heavy rainfall in such a short time period, the sewer and runoff systems are overloaded and may cause overflowing water to fill the streets. The other extreme weather condition, being droughts, lead to increased evaporation of water in lakes, water ditches, and the earth. To tackle these unfortunate events, a solution is presented which covers the following main requirements; firstly, it must offer a large water storage capacity in the events of an extreme rainfall approaching the Netherlands to control water overflow for safe distribution, and secondly, the solution has to make it possible to harvest and store rainfall so as to have a backup water-supply in case of a dry spell. The solution comes in the form of a large volume Smart Rainwater Buffer (a.k.a. SRB XXL); a large silo tank, with a volume of 30 cubic meters, which collects rainwater from nearby rooftops and is able to self-regulate the stored water content in order to be most efficient depending on the current or near-future weather conditions and located on the campus-terrain of the University of Twente at the “Sport-Centre” building. In this bachelor thesis, research, stakeholder interview-sessions and the Creative Technology Design Process are performed to create a concept for the SRB-XXL which satisfies the condition of being both a rainwater buffer as well as a harvester. The concept involves two water discharge ports; one for supplying the client with stored water to be used for campus facility maintenance, and the other for increasing rainwater storage capacity and removing settled sludge from the tank. Furthermore, a user interface dashboard design is created with the purpose of providing the user of the SRB-XXL with information regarding the water level, status conditions and future precipitation events, as well as allow the user to perform system-control commands. Also, the rainwater router is realized to direct the overflow water in case the tank reaches full water capacity and to minimize altering the storage tank’s base composition. Both the user interface as well as the rainwater router prototypes are evaluated for their fulfillment of the requirements made by the stakeholders in a functional and user evaluation. The prototypes satisfied almost all of the requirements and the client was pleased with the user interface design. The SRB-XXL concept should be realized in future projects, taking also the user interface and the rainwater router into account. 2 Acknowledgements During the creation of this thesis and graduation project, a number of people have been of great help to me and therefore deserve mentioning in this Acknowledgement section. First of all, I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor Richard Bults and critical observer Hans Scholten for helping me overcome the obstacles met during this project and for the invaluable feedback sessions where a lot of brainstorming was done. I would also like to thank the project-client Andre de Brouwer for sharing his insights into creating the SRB-XXL concept and his cooperation during interviews. Furthermore, Hendrik Jan Teekens and Eddo Pruim have been a great source of inspiration and wonderful traveling companions during the DeLaval company visit in Groningen. Lastly and most importantly, I am immensely grateful for the support my parents Ageeth and Bas and my sister Noa have given me during the tough moments, and my cat Gizmo for constantly hogging the keyboard when I was working on my thesis during the COVID-19 quarantine. 3 Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 7 1.1 Climate Change Adaptation .................................................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Rainwater management in Enschede ................................................................................................................ 8 1.3 Research Questions .................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.4 Thesis Outline ............................................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2: State of the Art ................................................................................................................................................ 10 2.1 Background Information ...................................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 Conventional RWH Systems ....................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.2 Specifications of the SRB-XXL ................................................................................................................... 11 2.1.3 Dual-purpose systems .................................................................................................................................. 11 2.2 Literature Research ................................................................................................................................................ 12 2.2.1 Water inflow and outflow control ........................................................................................................... 12 2.2.2 Filtering and maintenance .......................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.3 User interface data visualization ............................................................................................................. 15 2.2.4 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................... 16 2.3 State of the Art ........................................................................................................................................................... 17 2.3.1 RWH systems in Enschede .......................................................................................................................... 17 2.3.2 RWH systems in the Netherlands ............................................................................................................ 18 2.3.3 RWH systems in the rest of the world ................................................................................................... 20 2.3.4 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 3: Methods and Techniques ........................................................................................................................... 24 3.1 Creative Technology Design Process .............................................................................................................. 24 3.1.1 Ideation ................................................................................................................................................................ 25 3.1.2 Specification....................................................................................................................................................... 25 3.1.3 Realization .......................................................................................................................................................... 25 3.1.4 Evaluation ........................................................................................................................................................... 25 3.2 Stakeholder Identification & Analysis............................................................................................................ 26 3.2.1 Stakeholder Identification .......................................................................................................................... 26 3.2.2 Stakeholder Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 27 3.2.3 Understand your Key Stakeholders ....................................................................................................... 27 3.3 Research ....................................................................................................................................................................... 28 3.4 Brainstorm Session ................................................................................................................................................. 28 3.5 Interview Techniques 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