A. Hangan, L. Vacariu, O. Cret, H. Hedesiu Technical University of Cluj-Napoca A Prototype for the Remote Monitoring of Water Parameters

Overview Context Main issues of water parameters monitoring The water parameters monitoring system The remote monitoring system The wireless sensors network Application for accidental pollution detection

Context Water parameters and water quality monitoring – important in the context of water resources management Methods for water parameters monitoring: Manual gathering of samples: variable sampling frequency, high costs Monitoring stations along the shore: high costs, large environmental impact Remote monitoring using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and wireless data transmission: reduced costs and environmental impact

Context In Romania - as floods and river pollution appear frequently, there is need for advanced water management practices and tools Research objective: Develop water parameters monitoring system prototype with wireless sensor networks technology Monitoring system integrated with the Cyberwater e- platform

Water parameters monitoring Water monitoring sensor networks components Sensor nodes (measurement) Dataloggers (gather data, computation nodes) Community interface nodes (data is made public) Communication: Local: between sensor nodes and dataloggers Short range, high frequency, low amounts of data per transmission Long distance: between dataloggers and community interface nodes Takes place rarely (e.g. every two hours), larger amounts of data

Water parameters monitoring Energy consumption Type of measured parameters: Sensor technology does not currently exist for making high frequency measurements of concentrations Small set of parameters: surrogates; used to estimate the variable of interest “Standard” set of parameters: water temperature discharge specific conductance, turbidity pH dissolved oxygen

Water parameters monitoring system Cyberwater – e-platform for managing water resources, focused on pollution phenomena in rivers Monitoring system – facilitates acquisition and storage of data from sensor networks placed on the river shore

Remote monitoring system Architecture of a monitoring system that facilitates the measurement, acquisition and storage of water parameters Sensors located on the river shore measure water parameter Data acquisition sub-system on the river shore gathers data from sensors Measurement setup => architecture of local data acquisition sub-system Situations: S1: Measurements made in a small area of the river S2: Distance between two measurement locations >1km

Remote monitoring system Solution: S1: nodes (distance<300m); gateway handles long distance communication; decision making is possible. S2: (distance>1km)1node+1gateway for data acquisition and long distance communication; communication between subsequent nodes and local decision making not possible. GSM communication – feasible solution for long distance communication from the river shore Collected data in a remote database Database structure flexible enough to allow storage of data from a wide variety of sensors in different formats

Prototype architecture Monitoring application DB Data service provider Sensor data storage application GSM data storage service GSM modem Multiple WSNs on the river Water parameters monitoring prototype architecture

Wireless sensors network WSN solution from National Instruments (NI)

Wireless sensors network NI wireless solution allows integrating wired & wireless measurements, accessing remote data with secure web services and communicating with third-party wireless sensors Components (programable): gateway, nodes, (remote) computer for data storage NI WSN is especially designed for distributed monitoring applications: battery-powered, outdoor capable, wireless communication, operating range of 300 meters, industrial temperature ratings

Accidental pollution detection Detect accidental pollution on a river segment located downstream of a wastewater treatment plant Continuous measurements are made in four locations: first location – after the wastewater treatment plant second, third and fourth locations – after 4, 6 and 8 kilometers Human specialists determine the propagation pattern based on the measured values Monitored water parameters: discharge, temperature, conductivity, turbidity, pH and dissolved oxygen. Parameters used as surogates

Conclusions On-going research work in the direction of continuous monitoring of water parameters We identified and made an analysis of the main issues for water parameters monitoring We proposed a prototype for remote monitoring water parameters, which is part of the Cyberwater e-platform Future work: deployment of the proposed prototype solution, calibration of sensors and practical measurements of parameters