Sensor technology in city
infrastructure
To withstand the pressure on infrastructure that urbanisation will
bring, smart cities are expected to grow commensurate with the
process of worldwide urbanisation.
By Sivan Cohen
Improved water
management
Installing a network of smart, Internet
of Things (IoT)-enabled sensors can
greatly improve the efficiency of any
water distribution network. A key
benefit of smart water networks is
reducing non-revenue water, or supply
water physically lost as it passes
through the system owing to leakages.
Advanced
sensing
technologies,
such as analytical techniques that
measure water usage within a closed
geographical area to assess loss, can
provide utilities with real-time visibility
on any leaks occurring. Advanced data
14
M
ore than 6.5 billion people
are expected to live in cities
by 2050, according to UN
estimates. That figure represents
more than double the number of
people currently living in such
settlements. To withstand the pressure
on infrastructure that this process of
urbanisation will bring, smart cities —
referring to a concept by which cities’
traditionally offline systems such as
water supply networks are brought
online and connected to sophisticated
analysis and control systems — are
expected to grow commensurate with
this process of worldwide urbanisation.
Alongside provisioning special, low-
powered telecommunications networks
to support their connectivity, sensor
technology is the key means for driving
the growth of these projects, which are
expected to rise fourfold in number by
2025. The following are just some of the
ways in which the latest breed of low-
power sensors, specifically designed
for monitoring city infrastructure, are
helping to make the smart city dream
a reality.
Wastewater management can be improved by using smart networks to
connect infrastructure with control and monitoring systems.
analytics can add further insights by
parsing the raw information from the
sensors. According to a World Bank
study, 32 billion cubic meters of water
are lost annually through such issues
which, among other reasons, can
often be attributed to poor or ageing
infrastructure and theft.
Better wastewater
management
Like water, wastewater management
can also be improved by using smart
networks to connect infrastructure
with control and monitoring systems,
such as SCADA (Supervisory Control
and Data Acquisition) platforms.
Combined sewer overflow and sanitary
sewer overflow events occur whenever
sewer systems are filled past capacity
and are forced to spill contaminated
contents from designated overflow
sites. Such events can have devastating
implications for nearby residents and
for the local ecosystem.
The more real-time monitoring
capabilities a utility has at its disposal
Water Sewage & Effluent September/October 2017
(such as data from sensors to measure
water quality, pressure, and velocity),
the quicker it can react to changing
conditions
to
initiate
remedial
mechanisms such as manipulating
underground gates and valves or
activating ancillary treatment sites.
Fewer overflows also extends the
lifetime of equipment throughout
wastewater networks.
Better power
Although
from
a
consumer’s
perspective it may seem hard to
distinguish between the electricity
supplied from one outlet to the next,
this is not the case for industrial
users for whom the consistency of
voltage, frequency, and waveform
can have important ramifications for
manufacturing processes and machine
life expectancy.
Variations in power quality can
result from voltage sags, spikes, and
swells. Even interruptions lasting only a
few milliseconds can damage sensitive
equipment. Continuous power-quality