IoT technology for smart Water system

A serious drop in ensuring the water quality in the distribution system is a factor that affects public health. This could lead to increase in biological and non-biological contents, change in colour and odour of the water. These contaminants cause a serious threat to the whole water ecosystem. The conventional methods of analyzing the water quality require much time and labour. So there is a need to monitor and protect the water with a real time water quality monitoring system in order to make active measurements to reduce contamination. The growth of the technology had helped in developing efficient methods to solve many serious issues in real-time. Internet of things (IoT) has achieved a great focus due to its faster processing and intelligence. This paper focuses on discussing the architecture, applications and need of IoT in water management syste

Internet of Things (Iot) for Smart Cities- The Future Technology Revolution

Today the world is becoming connected. The number of devices that are connected are increasing day by day. Many studies reveal that about 50 billion devices would be connected by 2020 indicating that Internet of things have a very big role to play in the future to come. The applications of IoT are immense which include Energy, Healthcare, and Agriculture to name a few. IoT is an emerging technology that works with the integration of many other present day technologies. There are many threats to the environment today among them urbanization is one. The growing needs of the uraban population across the world are posing a serious threat to the environment. We need to act fast and meet these needs by developing technologies that cater the world problems. One such solution is to develop a smart world. The most important application of IoT is smart cities. Smart city represents one of the most promising, important and difficult Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In the last few years, the smart city concept has played an important role in both scholastic and industry fields, with the advancement and operation of various middleware platforms and IoT-based infrastructures. This paper talks about the role of IoT in developing smart cities for a smarter world

Photonics for Smart Cities

We review the current applications of photonic technologies to Smart Cities. Inspired by the future needs of Smart Cities, we then propose potential applications of advanced photonic technologies. We find that photonics already has a major impact on Smart Cities, in terms of smart lighting, sensing, and communication technologies. We further find that advanced photonic technologies could lead to vastly improved infrastructure, such as smart water‐supply systems. We conclude by proposing directions for future research that will have the greatest impact on realizing Smart City initiatives

Artificial Intelligence in Wastewater Treatment Facilities: Implementing Practical New Technologies for the End User

Design phase operator input can prove useful; however, it is not essential in every application, as Akron’s treatment plant implemented AI to increase treatment capacity without design-phase operator input. They implemented a system flight simulator, a few hours training, and have communicated with the designer to make system tweaks as needed. In larger applications, the owner may benefit greatly by incorporating design input from operational staff. Those representing a municipality as a project owner for a treatment plant upgrade should always maintain an active role in the design of smart water infrastructure. They must keep the operators in mind when reviewing the drawings and specifications to ensure practicality whether there is a large infrastructural upgrade or just the implementation of the smart systems. Though AI water treatment monitoring and control offers great benefits, the question of how to overcome these obstacles remains

A systemic review of the cybersecurity challenges in Australian water infrastructure management

Cybersecurity risks have become obstinate problems for critical water infrastructure management in Australia and worldwide. Water management in Australia involves a vast complex of smart technical control systems interconnected with several networks, making the infrastructure susceptible to cyber-attacks. Therefore, ensuring the use of security mechanisms in the control system modules and communication networks for sensors and actuators is vital. The statistics show that Australia is facing frequent cyber-attacks, most of which are either undetected or overlooked or require immediate response. To address these cyber risks, Australia has changed from a country with negligible recognition of attacks on critical infrastructure to a country with improved capability to manage cyber warfare. However, little attention is paid to reducing the risk of attacks to the critical water infrastructure. This study aims to evaluate Australia’s current cybersecurity attack landscape and the implemented controls for water infrastructure using a systematic literature review (SLR). This study also compares Australia in the context of global developments and proposes future research directions. The synthesis of the evidence from 271 studies in this review indicates the importance of managing security vulnerabilities and threats in SCADA water control systems, including the need to upgrade the contemporary water security architecture to mitigate emerging risks. Moreover, human resource development with a specific focus on security awareness and training for SCADA employees is found to be lacking, which will be essential for alleviating cyber threats to the water infrastructure in Australia

Environmental and economic assessment of urban water systems and evolution towards a sustainable model: case study of La Vall de Boí (Lleida, Spain)

To improve the actual urban water system in la Vall de Boí in order to achieve a more sustainable model. By analysing a selected material and energy flows as well as a selected environmental impacts associated with the metabolism of the urban water system, a study of the current sustainability level will be done with a MFA-LCA approach. Then, certain interventions based on sustainable development will be studied and compared with specific KPIs for each intervention and in relation with the current situation.The upcoming sustainability challenges in the urban water systems are driving management and planning focus towards sustainability in a more holistic and integrated view. In this work, the Dynamic Metabolism Model (DMM), based on the LCA and MFA approach, has been used to analyse the inputs and outputs from the urban water system (UWS) metabolism to give sustainability assessment. It constitutes the first step to achieve a full internalisation of costs of the UWS. This model has been carried out in a real case study in the Vall de Boí, Pyrenees, Spain. The present analysis, as well as future interventions and scenarios, are developed after consulting stakeholders involved. The impact assessment has shown that the greatest impact is the in-house and the WWTPs energy demand, so the interventions have been designed to overcome them reducing them, designing green infrastructure and using ICTs to improve the efficiency of the current assets. In this work, an integral solution has been also designed modelling water policies to understand their impacts on the UWS thanks to specific calculated KPIs. The DMM has been demonstrated as a powerful tool to comprehensively understand the impacts of specific interventions strategies that can usefully help stakeholders into the decision-making process. The results of the improvement assessment showed a reduction up to 24% of the GWP and AP impacts, and up to 49% of the EP impacts. The results also show that a sustainable urban water planning and policy, decoupled from the economic dimension can be achieved while demonstrating that can represent an opportunity to reduce costs and generate business too

Smart Urban Water Networks

This book presents the paper form of the Special Issue (SI) on Smart Urban Water Networks. The number and topics of the papers in the SI confirm the growing interest of operators and researchers for the new paradigm of smart networks, as part of the more general smart city. The SI showed that digital information and communication technology (ICT), with the implementation of smart meters and other digital devices, can significantly improve the modelling and the management of urban water networks, contributing to a radical transformation of the traditional paradigm of water utilities. The paper collection in this SI includes different crucial topics such as the reliability, resilience, and performance of water networks, innovative demand management, and the novel challenge of real-time control and operation, along with their implications for cyber-security. The SI collected fourteen papers that provide a wide perspective of solutions, trends, and challenges in the contest of smart urban water networks. Some solutions have already been implemented in pilot sites (i.e., for water network partitioning, cyber-security, and water demand disaggregation and forecasting), while further investigations are required for other methods, e.g., the data-driven approaches for real time control. In all cases, a new deal between academia, industry, and governments must be embraced to start the new era of smart urban water systems