AI-generated summary
Water is a finite and increasingly scarce resource, with the United Nations warning that by 2025, 1.8 billion people would face water scarcity, a figure that could nearly double between 2016 and 2050 due to rising urban populations. Many water losses occur unnoticed through leaks in underground pipes caused by factors like pressure changes, natural events, and infrastructure damage. Since these leaks often remain hidden, continuous monitoring is essential to detect and prevent costly water waste. Beyond leak prevention, technology can also address unsustainable water use, such as excessive irrigation in arid regions.
Advancements in water management rely heavily on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, which use sensors to monitor pressure drops, abnormal flow speeds, or humidity changes in water networks. Companies like Aqualia are leveraging mobile telecommunications to manage millions of connection points, making water monitoring more efficient and accessible. This “internetisation of water,” as termed by Klaus Schwab, not only aids municipalities but also encourages individual awareness and conservation efforts. Complementary to technological monitoring, traditional and innovative water capture methods—including atmospheric water generation, stone barriers, rainwater catchers, and floating photovoltaic panels—help combat drought and water loss. These combined strategies hold promise for sustainable water management and energy self-sufficiency in many metropolitan regions worldwide.
Despite its ubiquitous presence on the planet and human adaptability, most water cannot be used for drinking or farming; and the technology to desalination the ocean is energy-intensive and produces significant environmental damage. There are examples of IoT applied to water management to protect this critical resource.
Water, a finite and increasingly scarce resource
Just before adopting the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN argued that 1.8 billion people lived in countries that would face water scarcity by 2025, the same number of people who gained access to water thanks to the MDGs. The Latest reports show that the global urban population subject to water scarcity could double from 2016 to 2050, reaching 1.7 to 2.4 billion people.
Why is it necessary to monitor water pipes? What is not measured, does not exist
The pipes, especially those made of iron, have water leaks for reasons as diverse as breaks due to increases in pressure, small earthquakes and landslides, drilling by roots, frost, accidents of nearby works, and a long etcetera of circumstances.
As they are buried and not visible, and taking into account that many water leaks do not surface but penetrate the earth, it is possible for a municipality to have millions of dollars in water leaks for decades without anyone seeing anything. That is why we have to measure.
In addition, this technology can be used not only as a technology that avoids losses due to accidental events, but also the waste associated with unsustainable human activities such as lawn irrigation in dry or arid climates.
IoT for water management: looking for pressure drops
Over the last few decades, water leak detection technology has been made available to the management systems of municipalities and regions with the aim of acting quickly in the event of a leak. And they are being a success in protecting this valuable resource.
The monitoring of the water network is based on sensorisation to detect pressure drops, inappropriate speeds inside pipes or sudden increases in humidity outside them. Being networked, they are examples of IoT.
Monitor water using mobile phone lines
Giants in the water protection sector, such as Aqualia (45.2 million users in 18 countries) are making use of mobile telecommunications technology to monitor hotspots, and at the beginning of 2024 signed a contract with Vodafone with 6.5 million active lines, that is, connection sending points. However, these points can serve dozens of read points in the same way that a modem can communicate all the devices in the same household to the Internet.
This ‘internetisation of water’ – which Klaus Schwab, creator of the World Economic Forum, called waternet in his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016) – is also important for citizens to be aware of their consumption and to be able to take action to make better use of this resource. Although the individual perspective is much less efficient than a regional policy, it is a way of adding up.
Planting stones to create streams, floating photovoltaics to prevent evaporative losses, digging rainwater catchers
To fight against drought and water shortages, especially in dry countries, the monitoring of water management is complemented by actions as varied as those given as examples:
- Atmospheric water capture, both through renewable-powered chillers and passive mist-condensing networks, is emerging as a less harmful solution than desalinating.
- All over the world, but especially in Africa with the crescents and the United States and China with stone barriers, they are using water capture and rain-absorption technologies with zero-mechanical energy systems available for millennia.
- In an interesting estimate by researchers from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen (China), it is concluded that more than 154 large metropolitan areas in the world could achieve energy self-sufficiency through floating photovoltaics, which in turn will protect their sources of reservoir water from evaporation.
