Water Quality Monitoring

Protecting the quality of drinking water is one of the most important priorities in any city, which is why more municipalities are adopting smart water quality monitoring systems. Smart city solutions like water quality monitoring, air quality monitoring or smart grid technology use data and analytics to better monitor real-time conditions, understand usage patterns and make more informed decisions that can help to improve quality while reducing cost.

Smart water quality monitoring uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors placed throughout the city’s water system to monitor everything from the quality of water (including levels of contaminants) to pressure, temperature, potential leaks and consumption, giving water utility managers real-time information they can use to improve water management and ensure water quality.

Data from water quality monitoring sensors is transmitted via a high-performance network to an IoT platform, where analytics software is used to extract insight and actionable intelligence. These findings are presented to city planners and water utility officials through a variety of user interfaces such as dashboards, reports and maps.

Water quality monitoring can be combined with air pollution monitoring, temperature monitoring and other environmental monitoring technologies to give planners a complete view of the health of the environment throughout the city.

The benefits of water quality monitoring

Smart water quality monitoring provides a number of benefits that include:

• Stronger protection of public health. Contaminants in drinking water can cause adverse health outcomes such as birth defects and terminal ailments. By constantly monitoring water quality, cities can better protect residents and improve public health.
• Ensure compliance. Water quality monitoring can help cities comply with regulations such as the Clean Water Act and avoid violations that can lead to fines and legal exposure.
• Reducing the impact of natural and ecological disasters. When weather events, accidents, leaks and spills contaminate the water supply, water monitoring technology can quickly alert city officials who can take appropriate action to protect the general public.

Water quality monitoring solutions can be integrated with smart water management technologies that help to prevent water shortages due to leaks, enable predictive maintenance on water utility infrastructure, reduce overhead costs and enable utilities to adequately plan for demand to alleviate stress on water distribution networks.

Spectrum Enterprise delivers water quality monitoring infrastructure

Spectrum Enterprise is a trusted technology partner to smart cities throughout the United States, providing the connectivity foundation that smart technologies require to connect sensor data with IoT platforms. Spectrum has over 840,000 miles of cable in a wholly-owned fiber network, delivering the high-speed performance required for smart technologies like water quality monitoring as well as traffic monitoring, dust monitoring and other smart technologies. For governments and enterprise clients, Spectrum Enterprise offers symmetrical connection speeds up to 100 Gbps, while providing gigabit connections for homes and businesses. Spectrum also offers a range of connectivity protocols, allowing water quality monitoring sensors to connect via wired, wireless or cellular connections.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.