Better management of intermitted water supply based on smart sensors and transparency of data

Like many other capital cities in Latin America and Asia, the water supply of Mexico City is intermitted, which has negative effect on water availability and quality. The long term vision of Mexico City is to make drinking water of best quality continuously available through the pipeline system to every single citizen. Major investments into water infrastructure are necessary to achieve this long term goal.

Until this can be achieved, during a transition phase of 20 to 30 years, this project wants to help making water as accessible, secure, and of best quality as possible, at a small fraction of infrastructure investment costs.

The plan is to apply a least cost strategy with the best short term effect on water accessibility and water quality, by investing into smart water technology (sensors, actuators, communication, central data management), which goes parallel to repairing the water infrastructure, but can be achieved much faster.

The project’s DNA constitutes of two main ideas: Collecting and managing water data from a dense network of smart sensors; and making these data transparent and accessible for a broader public.

The project team will deploy hundreds (later thousands) of smart sensors initially in the unam university network, and later at private households all over Mexico City, to measure mainly water pressure and water flow; later also quality parameters to feed into the same (cellular) network. Data will be collected and analyzed in the open and independent Water Transparency Portal (WTP), which consists of the Data Collection and Management System (DCMS), and will be made transparent to the public via the Data Publication System (DPS).

The WTP will visualize water data for anyone interested and address a broader public on 3 different user levels, including water consumers, scientists, managers, politicians, journalists, social media, and so on. The data will be transformed into numerical and graphical formats that can be understood by everybody, just like traffic data in Google maps.

The project is being set up as a collaboration between the Water Transparency Foundation (WT), the engineering institute of the largest Mexican university (unam), young Mexican start-up companies in the fields of sensors and data management, and some water related authorities, and allies.

Some merits of the project will be: Cost efficient and same time reliable pressure and flow data; for “first flush” management to optimize quality during the given time windows of water pressure; for network optimization and balancing of pressure zones; for leakage and loss detection support; for transparency of the water system to everybody .

Socio-political targets are to connect to water customers through a strong “citizen science” approach; bring young water consumers on board by virtualization of water on smart phone apps and motivate to reduce water consumption by interaction via these apps; increase customer trust and satisfaction with the final target to motivate to use network water for all purposes inclusive drinking; develop a core social water network of the first 500 enthusiastic users, tell their stories as a reference for Mexico City.