Internet of Things for Sewer Management
Like many cities, combine sewer overflowed is a frustrating problem. Many cities found their way to reduce the combined sewer overflowed. Kansas City deployed a “Smart Sewer” system that successfully manage the stormwater overflowed problem.
Kansas City uses IoT sensors, as well as AI and deep datasets, for controlling sewer and stormwater flows. Nearly 300 IoT sensors are used in over 2800 miles pipes to monitor the flow and the depth of water. Kansas City has embarked on a continuous monitoring and adaptive control (CMAC) system that could automatically control the flow gates to maximize the water storage capacity. Now, Kansas City able to capture up to 92% of all the stormwater run-off each year.
The example of Kansas City provides many insights for other cities facing the same problem. First, they could use IoT sensors to capture the real-time flow data. Then they could use those data, and other datasets that are provides to predict where will occur overflows. Finally, the flow gates take action to control the stormwater.
Based on Kansas City, the expense of deploy a smart sewer system will not be cheap. Compare to the cost of overflow in the future, deploy a smart sewer system is worth it. On the other hand, as the technologies developed, the cost of the IoT devices and analysis system will decreasing each year, so managing the smart sewer system will be affordable.
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