Smart City objective: to monitor every drop of water

In a world where the number of connected devices is growing by the day while brand new possibilities are being provided by the Internet of Things, the concept of Smart City is already a reality in many places around the world. A Smart City is one that applies technology and innovation in favour of sustainable development and substantial improvement in their citizens’ quality of life. Right now in Spain, or to be more precise, in Burgos, we can find an excellent example of this approach. The city has become a pioneer, featuring an intelligent network for water distribution that is full of advantages for the population and, incidentally, for the environment. Burgos is not just a beautiful city anymore, but also a Smart one.

Internet of Things to manage water quality standard and early detection of leakages

According to data provided by AEAS, the Spanish Association for Water Supply and Wastewater Management, nearly 23% of drinking water spent in cities is not registered by the measuring meters. A shocking figure, in particular given the water scarcity periods undergone by the country regularly.

Having this in mind, ACCIONA Water has developed a ground-breaking project so that the technology arrives to Burgos’ pipes in order to provide a better service to the citizens. How? With the help of Big Data, Internet of Things and Business Intelligence.                       

SWING project consists of implementing a smart system, capable of managing water consumption, its quality standard, and the state of existing facilities. It features sensors capable of monitoring water properties and reading meters on a daily basis, a geolocation system and a software which, through all the collected feed, is able to detect any variation occurring anywhere in the network, from a temperature shift to marking the exact location of any failure or clogging. In other words, ACCIONA has designed and developed a system capable of monitoring every drop of water flowing through these smart pipes.

Thanks to this technological deployment and data management initiative, failure mitigation is remarkably faster and does not rely on the citizens calling out the issue when there’s something out of the ordinary. Besides, it entails an incalculable water saving and a huge relief for environment.

The project encompasses three sectors with their own hydrometrical behaviour (industry, urban and residential), whose results can be transposed to any other field into which ACCIONA implements this technology. The idea is to portray Burgos as a blueprint city for many other places where this smart water management system could be introduced.

An endeavour of European dimension

SWING (Smart Water Innovation Network in the City of Burgos) is a part of SmartWater4Europe, an EU-passed initiative seeking to promote innovative, sustainable and smart solutions for water management. The partnership is composed of 21 European institutions and the solution deployment reaches several locations all over Europe.
ACCIONA Water leads the initiative in Spain by carrying out this revolutionary smart supply network in Burgos. Perhaps, you´ll be living in the next water-management Smart City soon enough…

Source: ACCIONA