Hyderabad: IoT and LoRaWaN crucial in cutting cost of water supply

Hyderabad: Metropolitan Water Board managing director, M. Dana Kishore, said Internet of Things (IoT) and LoRaWaN (Long Range Wide Area Network) could be crucial in reducing the cost of water supply.

He said that in India, non-revenue water (NRW), water that is deemed lost before it reaches a customer due to leaks, theft or inaccuracies, varies between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. “At HMWS&SB, this figure is 37 per cent, In countries such as Israel and Singapore, this figure could be as low as five per cent,” he said.

Mr Kishore said low-cost, long range and long-term technological solutions were important in the context of water management. “To reduce the NRW to five per cent, we have to spend more than Rs 5,000 crore. There are technologies that can help us do this, but they are expensive,” he said.

He said that if a company could design a sensor that allowed the board to monitor manholes from a central room, it would be of great help. “This sensor has to be cheap since we have 2.5 lakh manholes spread across the 2.5 lakh km road network in the city,” he said.

Government implementing many pilot projects with IoT

Principal secretary, IT, Jayesh Ranjan, said the state government was implementing several pilot projects with Internet of Things. One of these is ‘rural health kiosks’ that had been set up in the hamlets in the state. “A person can sit inside this kiosk and without any human intervention, his medical details will be sent to a doctor sitting in a remote studio in Hyderabad. This initiative has received a great response,” he said. He was speaking at the inaugural of the second edition of the Things Conference India on LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) on Friday. The convention features talks and exhibits on the implementation of IoT technologies in reallife scenarios. Another example was of sensors embedded with the help of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in groundnut farms.