Towards a Low-Cost River Monitoring Setup

Deployment and upscale of traditional monitoring systems have different challenges, specially in developing countries, because of high investment costs, difficult operation and maintenance. In the last years there have been several low-cost, open-source products developed as well as initiatives with the objective of tackling down those issues.

Herein we present the setup and first leanings of the project L-DaaS “Local people for Discharge monitoring as a Service” where we proposed a scheme of using an open-source software for flow monitoring and a low-cost hardware which use standard components with a business model centred around a local enterprise in charge of the operation and maintenance. The project was executed in Zambia with a locally-driven environmental monitoring company based in the same country. Key stakeholders where the Water Resource Management Authority of Zambia and hydropower operators.

Open-source and low-cost system are not by themselves a solution, it is also needed to create a sustainable and scalable business model which fosters affordable, efficient, and locally supported water management solutions.