Smart water applications vs information and communication technologies – an integrative selection framework

Abstract

In urban water infrastructure (UWI), information and communication technology (ICT) are presently concentrated on central facilities (e.g., treatment plant) or are installed at main points in the urban drainage or water distribution network, e.g., inlet points of district meter areas (DMA) or combined sewer overflow structures. In this regard, the Internet of Things (IoT) concept as part of smart city development enables a large-scale implementation of measuring equipment and allows the integration of decentralised elements into an overall controlled system. Consequently, reliable and suitable ICT is a key element for the exchange of measurement and control data as well as for the success of these systems. From a water engineering perspective, it is often difficult to choose the right ICT for the intended UWI application. Likewise, from an IoT technology perspective, it is often unclear what kind of UWI applications are feasible, making them difficult to efficiently implement. Aim of this work is to develop a first-decision making tool, which can be used by network operators, researcher, and stakeholders to support supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) development and to realise an efficient ICT system in the field of network-based UWI. In contrast to existing recommendations, our approach is based on a comprehensive review of required spatial and temporal resolution of measurement and control data for a wide range of different network-based UWI applications. Subsequently, this enables a targeted coordination with the properties of communication technologies (e.g., data rate, range, and quality of service) and leads to a significantly improved and integrative decision-making tool.Subsequently, we tested the functionality of the framework on two exemplary applications in UWI, namely (1) determining suitable communication technologies for an early warning system for leakage detection and localisation in water distribution networks (e.g., (W)M-Bus for water meters, LoRaWAN for water pressure sensors, and GPRS at inlet points of DMA), and (2) identifying feasible applications for an existing LoRaWAN network (e.g., monitoring micro-climate and automatic irrigation at nature-based solutions). Results from the framework application have been evaluated through a literature review on used communication technologies, and are found to be consistent with real-word applications. As conclusion, different communication technologies are necessary to satisfy different requirements associated with an integrative approach for “smart water cities”. Selected for possible publication in a Special Issue in the Journal of Hydroinformatics.