Sustainable water management: Virtual reality training for open-channel flow monitoring

The estimated population growth in the next decades will create severe scarcity of water and will have a tremendous impact on the natural environment. Both the developed and developing countries will have to face increasing challenges to match the greater demand of clean and safe water, looking for supplies far from the residential area. This situation will be furtherly exasperated by the effects of climate change which, increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, will reduce the availability and the quality of water resources and will subject the population to serious and ongoing hazards. In such context, an accurate and continuous monitoring of surface waters represents a fundamental step to reduce the contamination status and plan actions for a sustainable management of this resource. In the last years, the development of advanced methodologies and high-tech equipment able to lower the times and costs of the field surveys has not been associated with an appropriate training of the technical staff of public and private bodies responsible for the control of the territory. In most cases, unable to outsource highly qualified personnel due to lack of funding, such bodies tend to reduce the monitoring activities, leaving the areas even more subject to the risk of disastrous events. The present paper proposes an innovative educational tool based on the virtual reality in support to technical and non-technical workforces in field activities. The tool represents a Virtual Laboratory able to train on the standard techniques for the accurate monitoring of the water discharge in open-channel flows and was successfully tested on a sample of people from the private and public water sector. According to the results, its use increased the fieldworkers' ability to quickly move within the river as well as to easily and correctly manage the measurement equipment and methodology, so reducing the costs and times of surveys in situ.