Cities Need Smart Water Management
Smart at present, India is undergoing a rapid change in terms of urbanization. According to a report by NITI Aayog, the urbanization rate in India will increase to over 60% in the next 30 years, assuming that the rate of economic growth is at 7-9%. Therefore, it is critical that local governments and policy makers have sustainable infrastructure plans to deal with increase in urban population. Smart cities and towns would be the ideal step forward as they can be digitally enabled, data-driven and also ensure that they are self-sufficient and sustainable. Recently, 15,000 scientists signed a ‘Warning to humanity’ document to make people aware about the unprecedented threats that our planet is currently facing. Loss of access to clean water is one among the main dangers listed in this document. Ac-cording to a WRG Report, 40% of Indian citizens may not even get sufficient drinking water by 2030. Therefore, Smart Water should be considered as a crucial factor when building Smart Cities. It is our duty
to make sure that our current and future cities have intelligent water and waste water treatment systems in place to efficiently manage this precious resource. Water crisis occurs in India mainly because of poor water management. In Bengaluru city itself, around 360 million litres of water go waste in terms of leakage due to old and worn-out pipelines in the city. A simple solution could be considering a system that can monitor grid pat-terns with remote sensors to enable water pressure using a software algorithm. Grundfos has such a solution and it is called Demand Driven Distribution (DDD). Our Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) also need to be upgraded. According to an analysis by IndiaSpend, major cities in India generate 62,000 million litres per day sewage whereas, the treatment capacity is only for 23,277 MLD. Moreover, out of 816 STPs only 522 are functional in India. Therefore, it is not only critical to treat wastewater but also look at avenues to reuse it.
Grundfos’ BioBooster provides solutions for wastewater treatment and water reuse for applications mainly in the food and beverage industry and for treating municipal and hospital wastewater. Smart Cities should also ensure that there is 24*7 uninterrupted supply of safe drinking water for its residents. According to Water Aid, around 37.7 million Indians are affected by waterborne diseases annually. One of the major challenges in ensuring safe drinking water is the difference between the time it takes to produce, distribute, and consume the water and the time it takes to investigate if it is safe to drink. Similarly, ensuring that contaminants stay within acceptable levels in water discharged from the wastewater treatment plant is important for avoiding collateral effects on the local community. The Grundfos BACMON is an ideal solution to overcome this serious health issue. BACMON is a fully automated bacteria monitoring solution. It can monitor microbiological parameters in the water continuously, with automated batch sampling technology delivering results in minutes without adding chemicals.
For a Smart City to be successful, adopting a sustainable mindset is as important as using smart technological innovations. Individuals will need to start adopting eco-friendly practices and products. Say for example, possible methods to overcome this increasing water demand is rain water harvesting and water aerators. If every independent house/flat try to use these systems, a huge amount of water can be conserved annually. This alone can reduce the water demand significantly, if efficiently designed and properly managed. Smart Cities can be the smartest way to upgrade the lives of urban residents and to protect our environment. But this can be a reality only if local Governments, corporate companies, technology experts and individuals join hands together for a sustainable revolution.
