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Smart Water Management System

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Volume 3 Issue 3 Article 2

March 2022

Smart Water Management System

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Recommended Citation
Femi, Julius Godslove (2022) "Smart Water Management System," International Journal of Smart Sensor
and Adhoc Network: Vol. 3 : Iss. 3 , Article 2.
DOI: 10.47893/IJSSAN.2022.1213
Available at: https://www.interscience.in/ijssan/vol3/iss3/2

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Interscience Journals at Interscience Research
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 Smart Water Management System
Julius Femi Godslove
Compunet Limited Rwang Pam St, 930105, Jos, Nigeria, [email protected]

Abstract
Water is one of the fundamental resources that aid life and there are speculations that estimate at
2025 almost half of the urban population will live under short supply and water stress. With the
usage of new technological advancements in IoT (Internet of Things) powered smart devices for
water management, it can become a worthy implementation towards avoiding the predicted
water depletion. In the past years up until recently, water monitoring and management were
manually carried out with intensive power requirements and high capital expense with low
efficiency recorded. Overflow of water overhead tanks in residential, commercial, cooperate and
educational settings, as well as broken pipes resulting in spillage, contribute to wastage at large.
Regular reservoirs for water cannot monitor nor give analytics and automated water level
detection in the tank. Vandalization or transmission blockages on distributions pipes may take so
long to discover. The proposed model addresses problems mentioned above by the application
of portable smart systems with interoperability and easily configurable to handle automated
management of water supply with energy efficiency and a reduction in power cost in both homes
and enterprise environment within smart cities as well as reduction of the rate of building
degradation as a result of overflow from overhead tanks. Our model also integrates the
application of Natural Language Processing for speech recognition as an alternate medium useful
in operating the system.
Keywords
Internet of Things (IoT), Sensors, Smartphones, Transmitter, Wireless networks, Water
management, Overhead tank.

1 Introduction

Overflowing tanks and reservoirs are arguably amongst the biggest cause of water wastage
across urban and rural areas. Often time results from forgetful control of the pump switches and
the absence of timely human presence to turn off the running motto when the overhead tank
begins to overflow. Water which is one of the most important resources for daily existence [1][5]
is fast depleting and falling in supply to meet the growing demand by rising population. Thus the
need to proffer cost-effective smart automated systems for water management. A lot of buildings
degrade over a short period due to consistent overflow of high rise tanks and reservoirs.
Other than the overall worries of freshwater shortage for a household reason, there are rising
worries for the shortage of water for agrarian purposes [2, 3]. To handle the difficulties of water
shortage, Smart water management and automation can greatly address the water crisis by
eliminating endless running of pumping motors even after water tanks are filled to maximum.

International Journal of Smart Sensors and Ad Hoc Networks (IJSSAN), ISSN No. 2248‐9738 , Vol‐3, ISSUE‐3
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This smart management model is conceivable principally by constant observing of water level
and quantity. [8] Constant water level observation can essentially decrease the wastage of water
subject to flooding from tanks or reservoirs. The smart management framework [13, 14, 15, 16,
17] can likewise assist with identifying water spills in a savvy home by examining water levels
during various hours of the day. A smart water management framework as such is a desperate
requirement for the drive toward green IoT on our planet.
Several years ago, the high cost of implementing automated water management systems led to
the low adoption of such technologies. Lately, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) for
smart urban areas [4], the expense has decreased altogether. Web 2.0 and [6] the development of
low-powered smart devices at relatively low prices has made associated gadgets with the
capacity to exchange information accessible to just anyone.

Fig.1 presents an outline of functionalities obtainable with IoT based water management system.
It, by and large, indicate tank state sensing capability using sensors [9, 10], the ability of smart
meters useful in measuring usage over time, real-time analysis is also a notable function
obtainable in smart water management, spillage or hardware damage can also be detected as well
as remotely controlling the pumping motto through a web interface or automated switching of
the motor based on water level [18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]. Smart valves for schedule
irrigation is another exciting functionality possible with automated water management.

Fig.1 Smart water management obtainable functions

International Journal of Smart Sensors and Ad Hoc Networks (IJSSAN), ISSN No. 2248‐9738 , Vol‐3, ISSUE‐3
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2 Literature Survey

In [26] the authors pointed out the lack of standardization of IoT devices to allow smooth
interoperability amongst varying vendors. My proposed model combines low-cost and low-
power hardware that interoperates seamlessly. An ultrasonic sensor was used by [27] for water
level sensing with reliance on the sound bombarding the water surface from the sensor consisting
of a speaker which generates ultrasonic sound waves and a mic to detect the resonance from the
water surface; this approach is prone to erroneous reading as surrounding sound external to the
tank could trigger the sensor reading. I proposed in this paper the use of a laser sensor which
gives a more reliable water level sensing independent of the external environment of the
overhead tank.
3. Proposed Work
Proposed in this paper is a description of the setup of a smart water management system using an
IoT control console connected to a cloud management dashboard as illustrated in Fig.2
Showcasing IoT devices like water level indicator sensors, smart switch for the pumping motor
hardware, wireless transceivers for device connectivity, and a management dashboard that can be
accessed and controlled from a user’s smartphone or PC. The dashboard shows real-time
analytics on water level and usage metrics.

Fig.2 Block Diagram for Proposed Smart Water Management System

2.1 Hardware and Software Requirements

A laser sensor of VL53LOX for precise water level indication in storage tanks can be utilized.
This type of sensor can sense the water level in real-time and with an attached HC12 transmitter
for data transfer to the cloud platform.
Components within the transmitter can comprise of an Arduino and NodeMcu utilizing low
power and transmitting data using any of the wireless technology such as Zigbee, Low Power Wide
Area Networks (LPWANs), RFID or Wi-Fi / Wi-Fi HaLow. The use of such transmitters combined

International Journal of Smart Sensors and Ad Hoc Networks (IJSSAN), ISSN No. 2248‐9738 , Vol‐3, ISSUE‐3
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can enable automated water level detection and system controlled refilling of water storage
tanks.
Incorporating a VL53L0X sensor module positioned at the topmost part inside the reservoir
opposite the fluid level uses a laser-based time-of-flight (ToF) distance ranging technique.
Invisible infrared laser rays are bounced from any surface thus measuring the time taken for the
light to reach the detector. The values obtained from the sensor recordings at varying time
intervals are transmitted to the cloud Ardafruit implementation.
A minimum threshold can be taken as V1 at time t1 and maximum water height defined as V2 at
time t2, actualtime T taken to fill the tank when empty is determined by equation (1).
T = 𝑉2 𝑡2 − 𝑉1 𝑡1 (1)
In equation (2) the pump switch is activated Ai automatically when the water level in the tank
detected by the sensor is equal to V1.
𝐴𝑖 = 𝑉1 (2)
and deactivate Di in equation (3) when the water level equals V2.
𝐷𝑖 = 𝑉2 (3)
Let the varying water level measured during fill up or usage time be n, thus Vnindicates the
current water level at time tn. Tank water level L in equation (4) at a particular time is given by
𝐿 = 𝑉2 𝑡2 − 𝑉𝑛 𝑡𝑛 (4)
The values received from the laser sensor are communicated to the cloud platform from which
users can gain analytical insights of water status in the tank. The Adafruit dashboard can also
indicate the pump status to users allowing for turn on/off of the pump remotely. Values received
from the sensor are transmitted to the pumping motor through the HC12 wireless transmitter to
activate or deactivate the pump motor remotely. Power consumption is greatly reduced by using
automated switching dependent on the sensor values thus preventing the motor pump from
running endlessly when the tank is filled to the defined maximum V2.
NodeMCU [11, 12, 13] which is useful for the deployment of IoT applications connects the
system to cloud storage. The Adafruit cloud platform is a useful implementation for such a
purpose. The platform can show the real-time value received and compute the current water
level. The continuous level measured by the laser sensor is transmitted to the NodeMcu and to
the Adafruit cloud platform from which graphical representation of water level at a given time
can be visualized and further analyze water usage.
The combination of Arduino [12, 13] Uno hardware, Relay, HC12 receiver connected to the
motor can serve as receiver unit of the setup. When the data received from the sensor is V1 then
the motor is activated to running mode by a smart Relay switch and deactivated when the value
is V2.

International Journal of Smart Sensors and Ad Hoc Networks (IJSSAN), ISSN No. 2248‐9738 , Vol‐3, ISSUE‐3
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This implementation ensures that water tanks and reservoirs do not overflow continuously
thereby wasting this precious resource. It automates water refill into tanks as well for continuous
water availability to users. In using the Adafruit cloud platform, users can gain analytics of
average daily quantity use and time taken for the water tank to be filled when the lower
configured limit is reached.
Leakage can be assumed as well by comparing [7] the expected fill-up time at any given level
against the wait time to fill up if it exceeds outrageously then a leakage notification can be
prompted.

3 Conclusion and future scope

We proposed a flexible, economical, easily configurable portable system for water management
and wastage reduction. The implementation described above can be expanded to smart
agricultural processes of watering plants and gardens. In present days liquid level monitoring is
essential in oil sectors, automotive, and many others. The proposed solution can automate the
process of liquid detection and optimum management as well as use analytics with insights for
detecting leakages, vandalism, or any form of damages along supply tracks. A high percentage of
wastage can be greatly reduced and accurate billing reading for the used resource can be
achieved. In the future, we look forward to integrating speech recognition using the Adafruit IO
web interface. This will extend the remote activation or deactivation of the motor using voice
commands.

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