The Future of Snow Resource Management: A Canadian Case Study.
Mountains are nature’s water towers; they play a crucial role by storing water as snow in the winter and gradually releasing it in the spring. This is why water utility companies have relied on expensive and hazardous methods to estimate the availability of future water resources.
Extreme weather induced by climate change, combined with new technology, has driven some forward-thinking organisations to modernize these practices. Metro Vancouver in British Columbia is one of those that have transformed their snow monitoring capabilities with the help of Wegaw’s snow water Digital Twin.
Since 1947, hydrologists at Metro Vancouver have been measuring snow using the same manual measurement techniques. But in 2023, they introduced digital snow water twins to their roster of methodologies.
In this blog, find out how Wegaw has enabled Metro Vancouver to:
- Create 3 x return on investment in Wegaw.
- Halve the risk of a serious health and safety incident involving helicopters or avalanches.
- Significant reduction of CO2 emissions.
- Increase data updates from monthly point sampling to daily with full catchment coverage.
Ensuring Future Water Security in Metro Vancouver
Metro Vancouver manages three water supply areas — Capilano, Seymour, and Coquitlam. These catchments provide 2.8 million residents with a clean, reliable, and affordable supply of drinking water, so the monitoring of snow water resources within these catchments is essential to meeting these demands.
For more than eight decades, hydrologists in Metro Vancouver have relied on traditional methods to gauge the volumes of water stored in snow.
The hydrologists of Metro Vancouver have undertaken the process of hiking or flying helicopters up mountains and conducting manual observations. This fieldwork is vital for water supply management. Nonetheless, it is plagued by a substantial margin of error ranging from 20 to 40 percent, and carries environmental, economic and safety concerns. Additionally, the hydrologists of Metro Vancouver are finding that an increasingly unpredictable climate system is creating huge challenges for predicting future water availability.
“I would say that there’s been a series of wake-up calls over the last several years, in terms of anomalous weather events or unusual weather events”
Peter Marshall, Hydrologist at Metro Vancouver
Until 2023, Metro Vancouver conducted field surveys using helicopters. This fieldwork involved inspecting weather stations and obtaining direct manual measurements.
Flying helicopters in remote snowy environments poses various dangers, such as unpredictable weather, ice formation, limited emergency landing options, altitude challenges, communication difficulties, and navigational complexities. To address these risks, pilots require specialised training, ongoing weather monitoring, and aircraft maintenance. However, these measures increase the costs and complexities associated with conducting snow surveys.
“It’s time consuming and it involves a lot of resources,”
Peter Marshall, Hydrologist at Metro Vancouver
Introducing Digital Twins for Snow Water Resource Estimation
At Wegaw, we use Machine Learning to combination with diverse geospatial data streams to deliver high resolution, high accuracy insights into snow conditions. These data sources include:
- Optical satellite imagery
- Atmospheric model outputs
- Surface in-situ measurements
For the last two years, Wegaw have been working with Metro Vancouver to build and validate a digital twin for snow water equivalent within the hydrological catchments of Capilano and Seymour.
Every day, Wegaw provides Metro Vancouver with 100m resolution Snow Water Equivalent maps via an API with key insights displayed through an interactive dashboard service.
Here we can see that there has been a particularly low snow year in the Capilano catchment during the 2023–24 water year vs the multi annual average, potentially crucial information for decision makers.
How has this changed the way Metro Vancouver operate?
The introduction of Wegaw’s data brought about a transformative shift. Now, instead of monthly updates, Metro Vancouver receives data every day across both the Seymour and Capilano catchments, enabling them to make more informed decisions with comprehensive coverage of the catchment area. This transition has not only streamlined operations but also delivered substantial cost savings and environmental benefits.
With a reduction in helicopter surveys and labour costs, Metro Vancouver has made a 3 x return on investment from the Wegaw snow water digital twin. Metro Vancouver has also slashed their helicopter-based CO2 emissions, in line with their sustainability goals.
By minimising reliance on helicopter operations, Metro Vancouver has significantly mitigated the risks associated with alpine environments, reducing the likelihood of serious incidents. The shift to Wegaw’s data has effectively halved the risk of health and safety incidents, safeguarding both personnel and resources.
Conclusions
The collaboration between Wegaw and Metro Vancouver marks a significant advancement in snow resource management. By adopting Wegaw's innovative digital twin technology, Metro Vancouver has transitioned to a more efficient and cost-effective approach, with daily updates and comprehensive coverage of critical catchment areas. This shift has not only resulted in substantial cost savings and a significant reduction in CO2 emissions but has also improved safety by minimising reliance on hazardous helicopter operations. Moving forward, this partnership sets a precedent for leveraging technology to address water resource challenges, offering a path towards sustainability and resilience in snow resource management.
