Visualization and control of the Liben Flood Barrier in Prague

In early 1997, it was decided to build a flood barrier on the Vltava river, which runs through Prague. In 2004, two years after the devastating flood of the century, which swept through Prague, the implementation of the flood barrier was undertaken, built in the Liben docks on the Vltava river. It was finished one year later, in 2005. The Liben Flood Barrier dam the billabong of the river which flows into the Rokytka creek. The gates of the dam can be closed to protect the capital against spring flooding. If this situation occurs, six powerful water pumps take the overflow water from the Liben docks and the creek Rokytka back into the billabong of the river.

A new SCADA-based control system has been implemented in the Liben docks in order to provide a reliable control of the flood barrier.

The control system of the Liben Flood Barrier consists of

• Five Siemens Simatic S-300 PLCs, which provide control of all automatic, lock-out and protective features
• Two industrial computers, which provide control of the filling station, saving and transferring the data to the Reliance system
• Control panels, installed on the flood gate
• One GSM communication driver, which enables sending information via SMS to any cell phone

Future plans include connecting the control system of the Liben Flood Barrier with the integrated system of the Vltava river basin, water main and sewage systems of the city of Prague and Prague's crisis center.

Pictures from the construction of the flood barrier in Liben docks, Prague

Overview of the Liben Flood Barrier during it's construction

View of the dam from the river Vltava shore, the first three water pumps are turned on

Examples of visualization screens

A visualization window that displays the entire Liben Flood Barrier. The visualization displays the states of all significant control units. The transparent trend charts on the top of the visualization window display the states of all measured water-levels and dam height.

This visualization window provides the settings of automatic operations, all values of the water-levels set in this window are displayed and can be compared with real water-levels.

The trend chart displaying all water-levels: the river, dock, estuary water-level of the Rokytka creek and dam height.

The visualization window that displays software calibration of the analog measuring. Using two calibration points, linear measurement can be calculated.