Page 302 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

From a general point of view, SMW has two main functions:

 Sensing: This involves the use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology for sensing and intelligent
monitoring to achieve business related data and centralized management such as water quality
monitoring, ship scheduling in rivers, etc.;

 Intelligent scheduling: Water resource could be sensed by the IoT integrated system to make
decisions on flood control and drought prevention; intelligent management of water
environment; and intelligent management of water distributions.

Steps have been made to improve the capabilities of the information technology needed for flood
and drought decision, water environment treatment, and water resources management.
In particular, smart metering technologies will play an important role in the real‐time measurement
of water consumption, identifying leaks at the consumer level and raising more awareness to
consumers on water consumption. With the development of sensors of active outlet, the web of
semantic sensors, the geoweb, the geographic modelling in 3D, and mobile communications, this
field has great potential for water authorities.
36
Smart Water Management in Cities
In today's integrated global economy and innovations in telecommunications, have created a
massive opportunity in utilities to assist in addressing management water challenges within cities
and urban water management.

The recognition of the challenges in the water sector have created intelligent tools which use ICTs
to alleviate global water issues. These technologies create tremendous opportunities to improve
the productivity and efficiency within the water sector with an aim to generate sustainability of the
resource. ICTs permit the continuous monitoring of water resources, providing real time monitoring
and measuring, making improvements in modelling and by extension problems diagnosis, enabling
proper maintenance and optimization all aspects of the water network.

An opportunity for more intelligent means to manage and protect the planet's water resources has
led to the development of Smart Water Management (SMW).
Smart Water Management increases the efficiency of the water sector while ensuring its economic
sustainability since municipalities and water utilities are better able to recover costs from non‐
revenue water and are better able to detect illegal connections.

Smart Water Management tools fall into the main areas listed below. However it should be noted
that the examples provided are not confined only to the areas represented but may overlap several
areas as seen in Figure 48.

1 Data acquisition & integration; (e.g., sensor networks, smart pipes, smart meters etc.);
2 Data dissemination; (e.g., Radio transmitters, WIFI, Internet etc.);
3 Modelling and analytics; (e.g., GIS, MikeURBAN, Aquacycle, AISUWRS, and UGROW etc.);
4 Data processing and Storage; (e.g., SaaS, Cloud computing, etc.);

5 Management and Control; (e.g., SCADA, optimization tools, etc.);
6 Visualization and decision support; (e.g., Web‐based communication and Information
systems tools etc.).

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36 Extracted from the document SSC‐0122‐rev3 "Technical Report on Smart Water Management for Smart
Sustainable Cities"

292 ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications