Scottish Canals and Glasgow City Council enter global competition
GLASGOW has joined 14 cities around the world, including New York, Milan and Brussels, to enter a global design competition that could see the continued transformation of the city’s canal corridor. The global design competition for professionals, C40’s Reinventing Cities, launched its fourth edition in February with Scottish Canals and Glasgow City Council submitting the Applecross site, located on the Forth & Clyde Canal in the city. C40 is a network of nearly 100 cities taking action to confront the climate crisis.
The competition aims to transform underused urban sites through innovative and zero-carbon projects, designed and developed by architects, planners, developers and environmentalists. North Glasgow has already seen new development including the Pinkston Watersports complex, Claypits Local Nature Reserve, Stockingfield Bridge and Europe’s first Smart canal scheme which has unlocked huge swathes of land for regeneration and development.
Smart water engineering
Glasgow’s Smart canal is playing an important part in the regeneration of north Glasgow where problems with surface water across large areas prevented any development. The £17m project was a combined effort from Scottish Canals, Scottish Water and Glasgow City Council. Limited capacity in the existing drainage systems meant that an innovative solution had to be found and the Smart canal was the answer.
Using predictive weather technology and sensors, the water level is lowered by just 100mm across the 21 miles of the Forth & Clyde canal’s top pound, creating extra capacity for the surface water run-off via new drainage systems, weirs and sluices into the canal and from north Glasgow into the River Kelvin during storms.
The system diverts the water away from the sewers – reducing the risk of flooding and pollution – and answers the problem of how to deal with excess surface water. The entire system can be monitored and managed remotely.
The use of new tech and the historic canal brings greater resilience to longterm climate change, increased rainfall and the likelihood of extreme weather events. On a practical level, there are also money-saving benefits. If, for instance, a section of the canal needs draining for lock gate repair, the water levels can be reduced ahead of the stop planks going in, meaning that there’s less water to be held back and drained, giving savings in time and budget.
As well as being the navigation authority for Scotland’s canals, Scottish Canals must comply with a whole range of legal requirements and statutory duties relating to water quality and health and safety, including managing the 19 reservoirs that supply the canals with water. During droughts, water is drawn down from the reservoirs to keep the canals topped up with water. The water in the reservoirs themselves drops during times of low or no rainfall. The installation of remote monitoring and the use of sustainable drainage systems could mean that the excess water is stored and used to maintain water levels in the navigation. Remote monitoring is already being installed on some of the more remote and difficult-to-access reservoirs that supply the Crinan Canal.
Environmental monitoring systems can be installed and excess water cleaned at source, instead of via existing sewerage and treatment plants. It’s a complex business, but as Ross Speirs, head of engineering and infrastructure at Scottish Canals, says, there’s huge potential to develop water management systems across the canal system to prevent flooding and meet environmental requirements and concerns in sustainable ways.