Mobile water checking possible now

ALAPPUZHA: The Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K) partnered IBM to develop ‘Swatchpaani’, a real-time water quality monitoring system. Powered by IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) technology, Swatchpaani can continuously monitor water quality and measure temperature, pH and presence of metal and non-metal substances in water. Dr S. Asharaf, principal investigator, IIITM-K (Swatchpaani Project) told this newspaper that the system was developed with the support of Bluemix, IBM's cloud platform.

The system was devised after our proposal was accepted by IBM under Shared University Research Grant Scheme in 2015-16. To finish the project, IBM gave $10,000. Apart from this, the IT department of state government had approved '4 lakh. The system is successfully tested by various agencies including Kerala Water Authority (KWA) and waiting for the mass implementation,” says Dr Asharaf. Swatchpaani solution is a composition of Libelium, signal conditioning boards and sensors and Raspberry Pi for connecting these to Bluemix. The Bluemix will help to keep the uploading data integrated into the Watson IoT platform for device and sensor data management, analysis and visualisation.

Swatchpaani will support data analysis in real-time and trigger alerts if there are anomalies in water samples. The system is also attached to a pre-screening mechanism to test the water quality of mobile water distribution systems. If it is implemented, it’s expected that anomalies in the conventional method of testing water quality, which is often inaccessible and time consuming, can largely be averted. It’s convenient, mobile, quick and cost effective solution for the pre-screening of water samples.

“The system can easily be attached to a vehicle and is user-friendly. A person can go around with the device in a vehicle and ensure the quality of potable water distributed in containers. The extensive lab tests may be mandated only when the pre-screening signals a potential threat,” said the research team leader.
According to a press release issued by IBM on Friday last on Swatchpaani system, the IBM Watson IoT platform is a scalable solution which provides seamless integration with various IoT devices to build specialised, integrated solutions to solve industry and business challenges. The Swatchpaani project is one such result on Watson IoT that demonstrates the impact technology can bring to the life of an individual.