Flood prevention through condition monitoring of pumping stations

Abstract

This paper investigates the possibility of fault detection of Centrifugal Pump System (CPS). Nowadays, river floods are one of the major challenges for modern society. Despite the significant achievements in the river flood forecasting and early warning systems, there is still a need of effective tools and measures either to prevent the floods or at least to decrease its negative impact on the agricultural and urban areas. This information can be used by storm-water and flood pumping stations to avoid the damage that can occur after the flood. One of the main issues is the condition monitoring of these pumping stations. In some cases, these stations are not ready for an instant response to natural disasters like floods. In order to prevent unexpected failures of the electric drives or the pumps themselves, it is necessary to monitor the state of the equipment. The proposed method is aimed to create a smart monitoring system for fault diagnosis of pumping stations. It can be helpful to avoid floods especially near the border of Estonia and Russia because floods generally occur in border areas like Tartu town and county, Lake Peipus, Pskov town and county, mining areas in North-East Estonia.