supplies dedicated to refugees in remote locations.
Following its study of options for such a system, the
agency identified the LoRaWAN
®
Internet of Things
network and Kerlink's Wirnet™ Station gateways as
the best solution. The deployments for these systems
require sensor-to-cloud monitoring programs, including
in some cases, solar-powered gateways.
Solution
The agency launched two pilot projects at refugee
camps in Uganda and Syria. The Ugandan Arua Field
site, where the pilot monitoring program was launched
first, provides daily water deliveries to as many as
470,000 refugees.
The solution, developped by GreenCityZen - a France-
based start-up, allows to monitor in realtime the water
supply on the different camps.
The LoRaWAN-enabled sensors installed at reservoirs
beginning in January 2019 enables managers to monitor
water levels in real-time, providing unprecedented
visibility into usage and resource management. They
also provided a reliable new source of coordinated
payment information for some 630 rental tanker trucks
that were hauling up to 6,387 cubic meters (about 1.5
million gallons) of water daily when the emergency
response began in 2015.
Data from the sensors designed by several companies
travels through an outdoor Kerlink Wirnet™ Station
LoRaWAN
®
gateway, which provides essential
connectivity with cloud databases and applications.
UNHCR managers integrates the data into a dashboard
that delivers new levels of visibility into operations of
this global program.
UN Adding LoRaWAN
®
IoT Networks in
Africa and Asia
The effectiveness of the sensor-to-cloud monitoring
programs in remote locations is resulting in the near-
term expansion to eight additional installations in
Africa and Asia, and officials see many more potential
applications for IoT-based wireless sensor networks.
Additional systems are envisioned in Uganda and Iraq,
as well as in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Bangladesh.
UNHCR Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Officer
Ryan Schweitzer noted that the IoT makes it both
simple and cost-effective to roll out a static water-level
monitoring system. The agency hopes to use it globally
as a "basis-of-payment" system for water-trucking
operations, which in Uganda are as high as $15 million
per month.
"The LoRaWAN
®
IoT Technology is mature, extremely
cost effective and scalable. The static reservoir-
monitoring technology works extremely well,"
Ryan SCHWEITZER, WASH Officer
Schweitzer added that the approach has broad
potential for all sectors of humanitarian services,
including monitoring of groundwater, water-supply
systems, water quality, waste collection and air
Kerlink Gateways and LoRaWAN
®
Network Delivering
Water-Monitoring Systems at UN Refugee Camps
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