Abstract
While smart metering applications have initially focused on energy and gas utility markets, water consumption has recently become the subject of increasing attention. Unfortunately, despite the large number of solutions available on the market, the lack of an open and widely accepted communication standard means that vendors typically propose proprietary data collection solutions whose adoption causes non-trivial problems to water utility companies in term of costs, vendor lock-in, and lack of control on the data collection infrastructure. There is the need for open and interoperable smart water metering solutions, capable of collecting data from the wide range of water meters on the market. This paper reports our experience in the development and field testing of a highly interoperable smart water metering solution, which we designed in collaboration with several water utility companies and which we deployed in Gorino Ferrarese, Italy, in collaboration with CADF (Consorzio Acque Delta Ferrarese), the water utility serving the city. At the core of our solution is SWaMM (Smart Water Metering Middleware), an interoperable wireless IoT middleware based on the Edge computing paradigm, which proved extremely effective in interfacing with several types of smart water meters operating with different protocols.
Highlights
The efficient use of natural resources is increasingly important, especially with the current trends towards a larger population mainly concentrated in urban environments [1,2]
The growing need for environmental sustainability is expected to push the need for smart metering solutions that avoid the waste of natural resources and increase the population awareness
A smart monitoring system allows to reduce energy consumption and water losses, which are usually connected to an excessive amount of pressure in the distribution network
Summary
The efficient use of natural resources is increasingly important, especially with the current trends towards a larger population mainly concentrated in urban environments (smart cities and megacities) [1,2]. Several impact analyses have proven that smart metering solutions are highly beneficial to society, as they are very effective both in engaging citizens to reduce excessive consumption and in detecting resource waste [3,4,5]. There is a growing interest in smart metering applications [6], that have initially focused on the energy [7] and gas [8] utility markets, which deal with the more expensive resources. Initial smart water metering solutions have proved very useful in order to identify and prevent water leakages, which is an increasingly important concern. The growing interest in sustainability in modern society has been stimulating and fostering the development of the smart water metering market to fight water leakages [9,10,11]
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