Enabling Equal Water Supply through Intelligent Water Management Systems

India is a rich in water resources having plenty of water bodies that satisfies the overall population. On the other hand, with the increasing population, demand for water is also increasing, thus Intelligent Water Management Systems is required. Supplying water to every city and each house has been a goal of the ULBs till date and efforts are being made in the same direction. However, these efforts are hampered by factors like aging water infrastructure that includes – old, damaged pipe systems, uncleaned water tanks, old or stopped motors and non-revenue water. These factors have encouraged researchers to come out with several new technologies that would improve the water supply system and would also allow for 24/7 good quality water supply leading to better & efficient Water Management System.

Moreover, in cities with more than one million people, the official water supply after 35% loss in leakages is just 125 litres/day per capita which is considerably lower than the demand of 210 litres/day per capita.One of a city’s most central portions of critical infrastructure is its Water System. An Intelligent Water System is designed in a way to collect significant and actionable data about the flow, pressure and distribution of water in a city. Additionally, it is also necessary that the consumption and the analysis of the overall use of water is certain. The issue of water management in the city context is fundamentally centred on evaluating water requirements, managing demand, ensuring equitable and quality access of water.

A city’s water distribution and management system must be efficient and viable enough that runs for a long term and is able to maintain its growth and should be well-equipped with the capacity which can be examined and networked with other critical systems to obtain more refined and granular information on their overall performance. Further effectiveness can be gained when various departments are able to share relevant, actionable information.

Water systems are often ignored yet are necessary components for energy management in smart cities, typically comprising 50% of a city’s total energy spend. Energy is the largest manageable cost in water/wastewater operations, yet augmenting treatment plants and distribution networks has often been passed over as a source of releasing up operating funds by cash-strapped municipalities. Once facilities are optimized and designed to gather meaningful and actionable data, municipal leaders can make improved and quicker decisions about their operations, which can result in up to 30% energy savings and up to 15% reduction of water losses.

Aim of Intelligent Water Management System is –

• A system that comprises the Intelligent Processes for Water resources, which delivers widespread prominence and consciousness on both sides of water consumptions and wastewater procedures. This helps in making improved decisions, augment productivity and reduce risk associated with the water management system.
• It also involves the Water Efficiency Diagnostics that helps mitigate Non-Revenue Water (NRW) through water pressure optimization and pipe leaks/damage detection.
• These Intelligent Water Management Systems helps in turning collected data from smart meters into prospects that evoke revenue and detect fraud/thefts.
• The system also helps in delivering insights from big data and smart devices that further help operators to improve irrigation, flood management and sewer overflows.

Water management is becoming more and more important as supplies are stressed by water scarcity. Many provinces are experiencing record droughts and others are exhausting water sources faster than they are being refilled. Integrating Intelligent Water Management Systems allows water suppliers to minimize Non-Revenue Water (NRW) by detecting leaks quickly and even predicatively using real-time Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data and compare that to model network simulations. Reducing NRW also allows municipalities to recover costs earned in water treatment and pumping which can be significant.