GROWING IMPORTANCE OF IOT-BASED SMART WATER NETWORKS

Internet of Things devices can be used to monitor the quality of drinking water, trackwater leakages,detect toxicity levels in the wastewater industry and automate the entire water distribution network of a city

- Saravanan Panneer Selvam

India is currently one of the most water stressed countries in the world. According to the data from WRI’s (World Resources Institute) Aqueduct, the country is in the 13th position among the top 17 most water stressed countries in the world. While India has made several progressive steps in mitigating this crisis, only an integrated water management system will be able to address several of the existing challenges, efficiently.

Challenges in existing water networks

Traditionally, a water network extracts, treats, transports and distributes water from one location to another. Even though the functionality remains similar, the size and capacity of a water network might vary. For example, commercial buildings and industries might use smaller networks for their water consumption purposes in comparison to the networks in smart cities and other metropolitan areas.

Currently, most of the water networks do not have the capability to fulfil the expectations and manage the resources effectively. These ageing networks are heavily mismanaged and could lead to more problems than the ones it set out to solve. For example, almost 30% of all piped water is wasted in the country due to leaky pipelines. Similarly, fresh water is used extensively by individuals, businesses and industries due to the lack of awareness of the on water treatment and multiple use of treated water. Our water networks do not have the right infrastructure currently to process the wastewater and release the same instead of treated water for different purposes.

IoT in water networks