Water resource management has become an important issue in recent years. On the one hand, it is getting more difficult than ever to predict the world’s annual rainfall; on the other hand, droughts
are more unanticipated and may last for longer periods of time.
And once a drought occurs, it can dramatically affect people’s everyday lives and even the national economy. Today’s water resource managers must protect water resources and also prevent water leakage and contamination during delivery.
This task is complicated by the fact that most water distribution infrastructures, which include pipelines and pumps, are located in isolated areas where wired communication devices are not available, and consequently they must rely on radio communications.
Using radio communications is cost effective, but a major disadvantage is the limit imposed on data transmission speed. For this reason, when deploying radio communications, operators generally use Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) to log data in local storage devices, and then collect the data site by site.
However, since in this case data is not transmitted in real time, implementing video surveillance applications can be difficult.
As a result, managers are turning to cellular communications, which is a better solution that features easy deployment, requires no site visits, and is suitable for video surveillance applications.
With wireless and IP-based cellular communications, operators can easily install cellular modems, data loggers, I/O controllers, and surveillance cameras at remote sites, and then manage the data from a central location. Because of these advantages, cellular communications is quickly replacing radio communications.
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[Charles Chen is Product Manager, Moxa.]