Understanding The Verticals Part 4: Enhancing Water Management and Waste Management
It’s time to check back in on Charlie’s connected lifestyle
Charlie’s connected life story continues with him being an advocate of water conservation prompted by the drought and rationing of lawn watering. Specifically, Charlie can access the city open data from the smart water management app on his smartphone for data on water rationing. Further, Charlie’s home is equipped with sensors in his waste containers to signal the waste management company for pick-up; and participated in replacing toilets in his smart home with a more efficient water usage for toilet flushes.
As a result, Charlie is able to track and manage his water usage, sewer bills, and waste management service charges. He subscribed to an auto-bill payment for his monthly water and waste management service charges. When he receives a notification of his monthly charges, he cross checks his tracking app on his smartphone before authorizing payment.
The goal is to support Charlie’s connected lifestyle in regard to water and waste management by enhancing his ability to manage and only pay for his actual usage of water and waste management services. This in turn promotes water conservation, manages water usage, and minimizes impact on water sources and reservoirs.
With Charlie’s concerns for water preservation and less pollution of the environment due to waste management, he has traversed seamlessly between multiple smart city verticals, namely, smart water management (smart water meters, water usage monitoring system), waste management (smart bin systems), city government (open data), and IoT infra (communications, connectivity, data, cloud, security, analytics).
However, this week (Understanding the Verticals Part 4), we’re going to highlight the water management and waste management verticals.
Water Management Vertical
Challenges
Water Management is the planning, development, allocation, management, and safety of water resources based on policies and regulations for optimum use of water resources. However, water faces severe challenges according to the World Economic Forum where water availability is ranked 4th highest risk to global security and its impact is rated as the second highest risk.
The challenges can be broadly categorized into four areas – consumption, conservation, contamination, and new sources.
Water supply for human consumption, agricultural, commercial and industrial usages plus the on-going people migration into the cities put a severe pressure on the city’s ability to efficiently manage water supply. As a result, how a city manages water demand (i.e., domestic uses, industrial cooling, cleaning, sanitation, etc.) is a critical challenge that requires the city and citizens working together to address water consumption challenges.
The prime area for realizing significant water conservation is in the agriculture; commercial, and industrial water usage. This is where IoT advancements in smart agriculture, smart manufacturing - reduction of water use in manufacturing operations; and IIoT - reduction of industrial water footprint are extremely important.
On a parallel challenge track is the impact of environmental pollution and contamination of water sources and reservoirs. This is where smart environment solutions/systems are leading the efforts for preserving water sources.
As for new water source, the major efforts are focused on recycling wastewater and development of new and/or supplementing existing water sources due to drought, climate change and population growth.
Solutions within the smart water management vertical
The IoT technology based solutions for the smart water management include those shown in the diagram below.
Opportunities
According to the EPA, “the U.S. water infrastructure needs a USD 384 billion upgrade.” While, American Water Works Association estimated that the replacement of U.S. water pipes alone would cost at least USD 1 trillion over the next 25 years. In addition, a new report from Navigant Research says the global revenue from smart water networks is projected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2016 to $7.2 billion in 2025, the report says.
Waste Management Vertical
Challenges
The intent of smart waste management is to implement technology driven (a.k.a. IoT based) waste management activities (e.g., collection, transportation, and disposal) and actions required for waste products (i.e., trash, sewage, etc.) operational efficiency and waste reduction.
The challenges that a city faces regarding waste management can be categorized into waste reduction, operational efficiency, and environment impact.
Specifically, how does the city encourage its citizen to be socially responsible for and be incentivized to participate in citywide waste reduction? Such participation includes not only recycling, elimination of non-degradable waste materials and re-purposing of waste materials for other uses; but also the use of IoT technology (inherent in connected lifestyle) for waste reduction.
The operational efficiency challenges involve continuous cost reduction programs - from pickups (100% recycling goal), through processing, to waste hauling and cost of disposition. Again, this is where IoT-based solutions play a vital role in improving operational efficiency.
The environmental challenges include limited available landfills, contamination of soil, water, and air, and generation of hazardous gases (e.g., methane) from landfills.
Solutions within the smart waste management vertical
The smart waste management solutions shown in the diagram below provides a view into the examples of how IoT technology would support a city’s waste reduction, waste management operational efficiency and reduction of environmental impacts due to waste.
Opportunities
According to the USDA’s February 2014 Report, “retail and consumer levels waste about 31%, or 133 billion pounds of food each year in the U.S.” Further, a Frost & Sullivan report found the global water and wastewater networks market earned revenues of $89.86 billion in 2014 and is estimated to reach $156.04 billion in 2020.