Towards Sustainable Water Supply: Schematic Development of Big Data Collection Using Internet of Things (IoT)

Water supply systems in the United States connect raw water sources to hundreds of millions of water consumers through humongous infrastructure that include approximately one million miles of buried water mains and service connections and thousands of treatment facilities and appurtenances. This enormous set-up is currently operated by more than 170,000 public water systems. Sustainability of the water supply system faces several imminent challenges such as: 1) increasing water main breaks, 2) decreasing fresh water resources, 3) untraceable non-revenue water use, and 4) increasing water demands. However, current water supply management practices are not capable of providing fundamental solutions to the issues identified above. Big Data is a new technical concept to collect massive amounts of relevant data from sensors installed to monitor structural condition, usage, and system performance. This Big Data concept can be realized by deploying Internet of Things (IoT) technology throughout the water supply infrastructure and consumers’ usage. This paper presents a schematic development of IoT application for Big Data collection through a myriad of water clients. The scheme consists of downstream and upstream data collection using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies connecting to IoT. Downstream data shall provide water usage and performance data to clients and upstream data is similar to traditional SCADA and Automated Meter Reading (AMR) systems. Ultimately, all data will be converged to build a Big Data collection system where data mining identifies 1) local and system performances including pressure and flow, 2) non-revenue and illegitimate water consumption, and 3) locations and quantity of water breaks and water losses. The goal of this development is to enable both utilities and consumers to proactively manage their water usage and achieve higher levels of sustainability in water supply.