A smart city is an urban area in which citizens can benefit from “intelligent” services and infrastructures, thanks to the application of technologies combining IoT sensors – Internet of Things – and Artificial Intelligence platforms based on Big Data analysis.
In this context, all public utility services (public transport, energy / water / gas management and distribution, public lighting, environmental management and monitoring, …) could be optimized, both in terms of the service level offered to citizens, and in terms of cost reduction for the Public Administration.
For example, the use of tools for active monitoring of infrastructures, together with the use of predictive maintenance techniques, allows to minimize malfunction time, and at the same time to reduce the costs due to ordinary or extraordinary maintenance.
In the context of public services for the management and distribution of energy, water and gas, the digitalization according to the smart city paradigm makes possible to achieve environmental sustainability objectives, such as those envisaged by the European Directive 20 -20-20 which establishes:
- the 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
- the achievement of 20% of renewable energy
- the 20% improvement in energy efficiency by 2020
The Hydro Control project
On the basis of the strong consolidated experience in the conduction of innovation projects in the area of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and IoT, Revelis was selected by the Pitagora Consortium managing entity of the ICT Hub of the Calabria Region, for the development of the Hydro Control project.
Hydro Control is a Research and Development project, aimed at designing and implementing a platform for:
- water consumption monitoring;
- identification of water leaks and/or theft;
- predictive maintenance of water networks
The platform, which includes both a network of IoT sensors, and a cloud-based platform for storage and Big Data processing, will be tested in the Municipality of Catanzaro.
Platform architecture
The Hydro Control platform provides an interoperability between an IoT sensor infrastructure and a cloud-based IT system for Big Data analysis.
IoT sensors allow the water consumption monitoring, and produce a datastream that is transmitted, via LoRaWan protocol, to the Big Data platform, that provides components for the storage and distributed processing of heterogeneous information.
The main features offered by the platform are the following:
- Consumption Monitoring, through dashboards for Municipality and citizens
- Water balance, aimed at identifying anomalous scenarios within a water sub-network, in which the total consumption by users is different from the volume of water introduced. These are scenarios in which there are breakages or theft of water, and therefore require the intervention of the Municipal Administration;
- Predictive maintenance, based on the training of neural networks with the aim of evaluating the residual useful life of the water pipes.
An app for water consumption monitoring
Smart consumption management is a new frontier in all fields, including the domestic one. In next few years you will be able to control everything in the house with a simple touch on the smartphone screen, program the use of water (for example watering your garden) following an hourly calendar, and vary it according to of some atmospheric events, such as soil moisture and external temperature, to avoid water waste.
To achieve these objectives, the Hydro Control project will be extended with the implementation of a smartphone app allowing users to consult their personal water consumption.
This will allow all public administrations that intend to make use of the platform – starting from the Municipality of Catanzaro – to provide their citizens with a formidable digital tool, as well as to increase the efficiency of their services. and to reduce costs, thanks to the interoperation of IOT devices – Internet of Things and Big Data Analytics tools for predictive maintenance.
