Smart Water Management, Andhra Pradesh, India

Challenges:

World over, Water is becoming more and more a scarce and valuable resource and needs to be managed better. The key to developing policies to manage and conserve scarce water resources sustainably is real-time data as to its availability, use and wastage, which has been a challenge until recently. The State of Andhra Pradesh in India wanted one authoritative system that contains all water related information such as supply, demand, environmental factors etc. to provide decision support to policymakers.

Solution:

Water Resource Information System from Vassar Labs provides a solution to bring sensor data, mobile input data, mathematical model derived data, satellite data, web-based data and all other data relevant to water to one platform to bring near real time visibility to all the water related assets for a large state, county, district or block.

Drones equipped sensors were able to measure:

• Rainfall
• Ground Water
• Reservoirs – Major, Medium and Minor
• Soil Moisture
• Rivers and Streams
• Irrigation Canals
• Environmental factors like temperature, humidity, sunshine, wind speed etc.

Andhra Pradesh has 100+ major and medium reservoirs, 40,000+ minor reservoirs, about 1 million Water Conservation Structures to recharge Ground Water. Real time data is obtained from 1900+ Automatic Weather Stations, 1250+ Automatic Ground Water Level sensors, 900+ Soil Moisture sensors and Sensors on Canals and Rivers at strategic locations.

The sensor data is augmented with the data from Hydrology models, Satellite data and data derived from Satellite data like Evapotranspiration, Soil Moisture, Water Spread area to volume estimations for the reservoirs. The Water Resource Information System also gives visibility into Water Conservation Structures used to recharge Groundwater. Water Resources Information from sensors is augmented by the data derived from models, satellite data and crowd sourced data. This provides one system to policy makers to show all the water assets of the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Water management of each of the individual components in the overall framework is further supported by a system of sensors/satellite data and linked decision support software.

http://www.vassarlabs.com/smart-water-section.html#wris

Las Vegas Valley Water Leak Management using IOT sensors

Challenges:

Cities are facing water shortages all over the world and need help identifying issues early to help avoid a catastrophic event. Water loss due to leaks, big and small, on service lines, waste water. For ratepayers, they can drive up the cost of water bills and in large pipelines, they can erupt into a major disaster. The Las Vegas Valley Water District’s (LVVWD) known water losses are due to failed small diameter service lines. To find leaks on small diameter service lines, the District employs leak detection devices that periodically listen for sounds or vibrations that maybe caused by water seeping from the system. To find leaks on large pipelines, the district manually surveys critical pipelines using sophisticated leak correlation equipment. Installed in 1960’s, the 30-inch water main supplies up to 7.5 million gallons of water per day to resorts, casinos and attractions. Las Vegas Valley Water District initially conducted some inspections of the pipe using a different technology and determined that several sections of the pipe were becoming degraded. They had to determine whether to replace the pipe before it really fails, or continue to wait until it fails and then replace it. This challenge is not just specific to Las Vegas Valley Water District – it is faced by water system operators each and every day.

Solution:

US telecommunications firm AT&T, technology company IBM and Mueller Water Products have collaborated to develop a solution which can help cities in water conservation. This solution was developed as a part of the Global City Teams Challenge organised by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and presented at NIST’s Tech Expo.

LVVWD deployed Mueller Water Products’ EchoShore®-TX permanent leak detection platform. The smart technology enabled LVVWD to better understand and manage the critical water supply pipeline and to reduce any potential water loss due to leakage. The monitoring platform combines proven acoustic leak detection technology with wireless connectivity and visual end-user dashboards to create a cost-effective monitoring solution. In Las Vegas, 13 permanent acoustic sensors are monitoring 3 miles of the aging pipeline installed under Las Vegas Boulevard, from Sunset to Flamingo Roads. (IOT News)

The technology allowed the LVVWD to think outside the box and monitor the pipe on a continuous basis to detect small leaks before they become larger, and then be able to schedule an act and make repairs as needed. In short, it allows LVVWD to extend the life of pipes significantly. The solution can now be installed permanently instead just a temporary solution in order to be continually proactive to find leaks.

The NIST water sustainability project incorporates AT&T wireless connectivity to collect, transmit and manage data from the EchoShore®-TX monitoring nodes. AT&T cellular wireless connectivity was selected as it’s secure, readily available and low cost for connecting Industrial Internet of Things like the sensor used in the EchoShore-TX system. AT&T is also helping Cities mobilise their worlds with state-of the-art communications for Industrial Internet of Things solutions like, smart metering, LED lighting, fleet management, renewable, energy and prepay energy. ( IOT News).

The implementation of this system by the LVVWD Corrosion control Systems Technician is explained in the following video: https://youtu.be/0zw9JJmSPnY

Smart Water technology to provide safe and clean water to Indigenous communities in Canada

Challenges:

The First Nations represents more than 50 nations and 50 indigenous languages from 634 communities in Canada. More than 1.67 million people in Canada identify themselves as an Indigenous person (according to the 2016 Census). About half of them live in provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. Many of these communities have been living under a boil water advisory for decades. Collecting the water with a pot and putting it on the stove to boil has become a routine to avoid contracting water-borne illnesses.

Following the Sustainable Development Goals, the Canadian Government wants to guarantee access to safe, clean water to these indigenous communities, but ending a drinking water advisory is often complex, spanning multiple phases, especially when the water property in Canada involves public and private reserves. Also, there is a two-tiered governance between the Canadian Government and the Indigenous Services of Canada to manage health services. To achieve this, requiring $172.6 million of the National budget. Actions to resolve a water or wastewater issue can include:

• Feasibility studies
• New system design work
• Interim repairs on existing systems
• Permanent repairs to existing infrastructure
• Construction of new infrastructure
• Improved training and monitoring

Solution:

APlug and Sense! platform is used to help predict harmful water levels for a water treatment facility. Similar technology has been used to protect and conserve the habit of the beluga whale in Alaska and to preserve endangered freshwater mussels in the Ohio River. The technology used sensors to measure water depth and chemistry elements. The data is sent by 4G to then communicate directly to cloud platform.

During installation it was discovered that there have been many water and wastewater overflow events in the community that have resulted in thousands of dollars in clean up an remediation efforts. Many times, these events were responsible for taking critical water systems offline or causing boil-water events due to possible contamination.

The project showed how the IoT can work efficiently and benefit water management while assuring cost reduction and removal of human error in the workflow when using automation.

Background

The Green Revolution changed India’s approach to agriculture. While the economic dividend as a result of the paradigm it introduced, is still being reaped, the resource base itself (groundwater resource) which made everything possible is now in a much depleted state. In some areas, groundwater levels have been falling to dangerous levels. As extraction for irrigation goes on unabated, there are parts of the country where it has fallen much beyond the levels considered replenishable. Consequently, people and food systems are thus increasingly more vulnerable to shocks pertaining to droughts and natural disasters.

As the groundwater situation develops further, there have been some efforts made to introduce use of water efficient irrigation systems and other technologies. However in most instances, these systems (such as drip irrigation systems) are often beyond the reach of the average rural farmer due to the high costs associated with the procurement and setup. This is where Kisan Raja, an India based company, addressed a huge gap in the irrigation technology market.

GSMing away to the Future

The GSM based controllers as introduced by Kisan Raja are very novel in their approach. Using relatively simple technology, they have a very low barrier to entry in terms of investment. People were able to safely and easily manage their irrigation setup with the addition of a single controller unit which is added to the pumping infrastructure. One or more water pumps are connected to a simple controller setup. Calls maybe made through a landline or a GSM phone to interact or control the functioning of the pumps or SMSs may also be used to achieve the same. This controller thus has very simple functionality, all one has to do is either place a missed call or send a message through their GSM phone or landline. Immediately the corresponding pumping infrastructure would switch on or off, based on its existing state. Earlier, the farmer would have to go to the field at all odd hours under all odd conditions. Thus, pumps would typically be left on for much longer than required leading to both water and energy wastage.

( Source: Kisan Raja)

While the intervention itself is relatively simple, the impact it has in rural areas is profound and widespread. Given that the barrier to entry is so low, the adoption of this has spread significantly on the ground. It makes switching pumping infrastructure a seamless exercise, whereas in the traditional setup the farmer would be keeping the pumping on well beyond what was required. Being easier to switch off means the farmers are able to prevent excess pumping and also able to establish cost savings in parallel by reducing energy consumption. In the earlier context, the constant pumping would cause the pumps to get damaged as they would also remain on even when no water was being pumped. The attached sensors prevents this from happening, thus not only leading to savings in terms of water use but also protecting the pumping infrastructure.

The widespread reach of such simple and inexpensive technology goes a long way in disrupting the business as usual paradigm and is often a lot more effective in creating change compared to the other more conventional or sophisticated solutions which are available at present.