Whitepapers

LoRaWAN is suited to supplement city-wide IoT application use cases because of the complementary nature and large, global ecosystem of devices and solutions... Further, water utilities that deploy LoRaWAN can offer additional value and use the same infrastructure to expand into supporting smart city applications, such as smart waste management, smart parking, smart street lighting and a plethora of others, generating new revenue streams or cost savings. Cities that own water utilities have the advantage of owning public assets (such as traffic poles, light poles and city buildings) where additional LoRaWAN gateways can be easily deployed, expanding the network by using common network architectures. CONCLUSION The water industry needs to implement new approaches to manage water infrastructure to cope with the challenges of increasing water scarcity, more frequent and intense extreme climate events, a growing population and ageing assets. Water distributors are responsible for improving their overall resource management strategies as they push towards net-zero targets and better sustainability and protection of scarce water resources. So far in Australia and New Zealand, some utilities have experienced the benefits of LoRaWAN to improve water resilience. Gold Coast City Council and IoT Ventures are prime examples of the large-scale deployment of low-cost, long-life sensors creating new data for SCADA systems, so that water operators, agricultural users and water consumers in industrial, commercial and residential can better monitor water usage. This increased visibility promises a revolution in water services, creating cost savings through reduction of non-revenue water and improved customer experience. LoRaWAN excels in meeting connectivity requirements in a more cost-effective and efficient manner when compared with other communications choices. The real benefits of IoT for water utilities can be unleashed by LoRaWAN to underpin greater water resilience. This is a unique moment in time where technology is available, with a vibrant local ecosystem in Australia-New Zealand, supported by the LoRa Alliance. By using LoRaWAN to get smarter about how water is used, managed and allocated, Australia and New Zealand can better meet local and global environmental imperatives while maintaining high standards of living and economic productivity. Case study: Real-Time Water Network Monitoring in France's Second Largest City The network providing water to France's second-largest city, the Metropolis of Lyon, is complex and extensive. Water authority Eau du Grand Lyon (EGL) provides water to the region's 2.2 million inhabitants using a metropolis-managed water network that spans 4,000 kilometres of pipes, 62 reservoirs and water towers, 11 water wells and 396,000 metering points. To improve visibility and management, network operators engaged specialist network provider Birdz to develop and integrate 400,000 smart water G2 sensors and LoRaWAN gateways. Smart meters, water quality sensors and acoustic correlators were distributed across the network, with each one connecting to a central 'grid management' platform via LoRaWAN. Installed over four years, the new monitoring network quickly paid itself off by helping network engineers identify and fix more than 1,200 water leaks. These and other network improvements have saved 1 million cubic metres of water annually, which along with other network fault remediation practices, have improved water network efficiency by 8% overall. Real-time reporting makes possible better reporting for consumers, while better visibility of network asset status has helped Metropolis authorities meet critical key performance indicators to avoid financial penalties for non-performance. www.lora-alliance.org p.12 Read more

• Cover