DJB cleans up its act with new mapping system

<div class="section0"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">NEW DELHI: The next time you see a clogged sewer or an overflowing drain, you know help is at hand. The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has, over a period of six months, covered more than half of the city''s 5,600-km network of internal, peripheral and trunk sewers under the digitised mapping system.Simply put, this may mean quicker action on leakages and faults in the sewage system and of course, less harassment to complainants at the local DJB office.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">If DJB officials are to be believed, the project would be fully operational by next monsoon. "It is an invaluable tool which will help us monitor faults on a real-time basis. We owe this achievement to a young team of dedicated engineers who have put tremendous effort into it," a senior official said. Explaining the mechanism of the system, an official said: "We have placed sensors in most parts of the sewage network which would detect faults and leakages as and when they occur. These sensors would then send signals to our computers at the headquarters, which would be constantly monitored by our team of engineers. We have also created an extensive database of troubled areas, which will help us in planning better."</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Only recently, the DJB had completed a similar mapping of the water supply lines in the city. "This, however, took us over four years to finish. And although it was done in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre, the sewage lines have been entirely digitised by us," the official added.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">During monsoon, sewers often cave in, get silted or become non-functional, resulting in widespread chaos. Caught in the quagmire, residents and civic personnel break open the clogged sewers and divert waste into drains. The untreated sewage flows into the Yamuna river.</span></div> </div>