Date: 26/05/2021

Monitoring storm water through IOT

For real-time and remote monitoring of water and air quality, Internet of things based systems fits in very well in saving resources and time. Water bodies such as tanks, lakes, rivers, and stormwater systems keep getting polluted basically due to human beings letting in industrial and residential waste into these water bodies.

The challenges with IOT based remote installations is to make them robust enough to withstand harsh weather conditions and will also ensure 24x7 real-time communication.

To monitor stormwater system in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia Bio2Lab, a specialist monitoring and data analytics consulting company has used Libelium made water sensors to act as the ‘electronic nose’ of the system and the data was communicated to the centralised system through cellular M2M system.

The final solution included a Libelium sensor network that stretched for 10 km along the stream. “These are some of the harshest conditions sensors can be put under, subjected to anything that goes down the drain, and the hardware provided by M2M Connectivity has proven to be accurate, durable, and reliable,” says Steve Marshall, Bio2Lab Principal Scientist.

One significant advantage of this system is, the pollutant is identified quickly and the source of pollutant is easier to identify through IOT systems. The system helps to take action when harmful contaminants are detected, increasing the speed at which they notify businesses and the community.

The massive flow of real-time data helps in finding patterns associated with the presence and absence of contaminants. For example, spikes in volatile compounds have been detected on specific days of the week and certain chemical profiles have given them insight into the industries that use them before they enter the waterway.

“Our partnership with M2M Connectivity has created positive results for the EPA and led to the creation of the first real-time IoT detection system successfully applied to stormwater in Australia,” says Steve Marshall, Principal Scientist at Bio2Lab.