Wastewater Management: An IoT Approach

Critical wastewater events such as sewer main blockages or overflows are often not detected until after the fact. These events can be costly, from both an environmental impact and monetary standpoint. By configuring and deploying a complete Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), Shoalhaven Water (SW) now has the opportunity to create “Internet of Things” (IoT) capable devices that offer freedom from the reliance on mobile network providers, whilst avoiding congestion on the existing Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) telemetry backbone. This network infrastructure allows for devices capable of real-time monitoring to alert of any system failures, providing an effective tool to proactively capture the current state of the sewer network between the much larger sewer pumping stations (SPSs). This paper presents a novel solution to improve the current wastewater network management procedures employed by SW. Furthermore, a preliminary end device has been developed to solve associated problems with the current method of testing SPS pump performance, in terms of achieved flow rate, for quality control and quality assurance.