Digital Transformation in Government Insight #63:
Adelaide’s IoT smart water network

Smart water network wins IoT Award

A couple of months ago, SA Water picked up two Internet of Things (IoT) awards for its smart water network — Best Municipal Project and the top honour, Best IoT Project of the Year. The smart network is part of a $4 million initiative to better manage the water supply in Adelaide’s CBD.

The smart water network

The SA Water trial consists of two elements:

1. Water sensors in the network to monitor both water flow and pressure

2. 100 smart meters for businesses in the Adelaide CBD

The aim of the water sensors is to enable SA Water to respond more quickly to critical issues (such as water main breaks), predict future requirements and build a more reliable network. The smart meters help Adelaide businesses monitor their usage and detect leaks.

The IoT Hub Award announcement summarises some of the system’s deliverables to date, including the prevention of 10 major water main failures and the detection of a major leak at one of the pilot businesses (the leak was wasting 100 litres of water per minute). The Award announcement is a quick and interesting read!

About the IoT Awards

The IoT Awards recognise outstanding achievement in the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT). Other winners this year include:

• NSW Department of Primary Industries monitoring station by Ardexa (Best Primary Industry Project)

• EMS Fuelsuite and Fuelscan fuel station monitoring by DiUS (Best Secondary Industry Project)

• Sofihub home assistant and notification system (Best Healthcare or Sport Project)

• Reekoh IoT Fabric IoT data and API management Platform (Best IoT Product or Platform)

This is the second year that IoT Hub has run the Awards.

Salsa Digital’s take

It’s great to see digital transformation happening at all levels of government, and all around Australia. The smart water network is an excellent example of how technology, in this case IoT, can transform the way things are done and ultimately save resources (time, money and water). It’s also not the first time water has hit our DTIG series. Back in May 2016 we looked at Mackay Council's introduction of smart meters to identify leaks, coupled with an alert notification system. Read more about this digital innovation in Mackay. There are many areas of government that can benefit from IoT, and water is just one of them.