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Industry 4.0: Smart Water Management System Using IoT

S. Saravanan1, N. Renugadevi2*, C.M. Naga Sudha3 and Parul Tripathi4

1Department of Mechanical Engineering, K. Ramakrishnan College of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India

2Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India

3Department of Computer Technology, Anna University MIT Campus, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

4Artificial Intelligence Group, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Delhi, India

Abstract

Industry 4.0 will provide increased automation, self-monitoring and improved communication in most industrial sectors in the near future. This can be achieved through a variety of sensors and different cloud platforms controlled through Internet of Things (IoT). The Industry 4.0 era has given innovative solutions to water service providers for distribution, monitoring, leakage detection and water metering. The existing method of managing water in municipalities requires manual attention. Further, water wastage, infrequent water cleaning, and at times contaminated water are considered the main drawbacks in the conventional municipality water management system. The quality of drinking water is one of the vital key elements for a healthy life. Therefore, the concept of Industry 4.0 can be employed to convert a manual into an automated system for managing municipality water. Hence, this paper surveys several research works on automated water management systems. From the extensive survey, it has been decided to propose a Smart Municipality Water Management System (SMWMS) to ensure good public health without water-borne diseases. This SMWMS assists the municipality in water conservation and in safeguarding public health; it can be widely employed in different applications such as the residential, agricultural and industrial sectors, to name a few.

Keywords: Industry 4.0, Internet of Things, water industry, municipality water, water quality

1.1 Introduction

The right moral compass is trying hard to think about what customers want.

- Sundar Pichai

1.1.1 Industry 4.0

With the blossoming of technologies in the Internet era, the term Industry 4.0 has been coined as a new stage in the evolution of Internet technologies. It has made automation a buzz word in almost all sectors. Industry 4.0 mainly deals with the integration of three components, namely Internet of Things (IoT) with Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Big Data Analytics and Communication Infrastructure [1]. The main scope of Industry 4.0 is to increase efficiency along with the effectiveness of the production field. In order to satisfy customer requirements, Industry 4.0 has to manage a huge amount of data which can be met with Cloud Computing techniques. In [2], Industry 4.0 is defined as "the combination of physical machines and devices integrated with smart sensors are utilized to control and predict for betterment of future decisions". It is defined as the CPS communication enabled over IoT which helps the real-time application to provide Internet of Services (IoS). These IoS are offered to the entire participants (both internal and external organizational service providers) who are involved in production and utilization of the supply chain. Industry 4.0 mainly highlights the possible ways to establish communication between human and machine through which the automation can be enhanced in an efficient way. Human-to-Machine (H-M) communication will initiate the emergence of smart factories with more business interaction models. Complex integration of CPS and IoT devices are equipped with network capabilities which can be used to sense, identify, process and communicate between them [3].

1.1.2 IoT

A combinational flavor of IoT and Industry 4.0 will ultimately lead to a smooth relationship between customers and suppliers. With this new flavor, domination of manufacturers and retailers will be avoided. Customers can make their own decisions on customization of their quality products which maintains the supply and demand cycle. However, a cyber-security threat is a great challenge in establishing Machine-to-Human (M-H) communication. The supply-demand cycle and efficient usage of resources which are considered as main characteristics of Industry 4.0 make the environment (production, cities, factories) become smart [4].

1.1.3 Smart City

Stock and Seliger [5] have described Industry 4.0 applications on smart cities, smart factories and smart products. A city which is connected by various factors, namely smart governance, smart people, smart health, smart communication and smart mobility, is defined as a smart city [6]. According to Jokob Julian, who is an architect and urban thinker, smart cities are a gift, a chance to transform old and slow systems and structures into a smart future. "Smart cities are developed in a vision of transforming the lives of digital citizens to meet their requirements," Julian writes. Every country has started smart city projects with their own framework in order to improve their citizens' quality of living.

1.1.4 Smart Water Management

When the well is dry, we'll know the worth of water.

- Benjamin Franklin

Global Risk Perception Survey Reports from the World Economic Forum highlight that there will be a greater societal impact of the water crisis over the next 10 years [4]. It will lead to a higher rate of water stress areas where water available for consumption will be on demand. In recent years, the water level consumed has been twice that of population growth. Therefore, there is a tradeoff between demand and supply of water. As everyone is aware about water scarcity in recent decades, it has its adverse consequences on food production also. Even though the future is uncertain, it is certain to have the hope that the situation can be changed. Water demands are increasing due to a huge increase in water consumption per capita among industrial sectors. Water is the first and foremost necessity of human life. Therefore, water policy has become a priority issue at the international level. If the proper water management is not maintained, a country's economic development will be at risk. With these facts in consideration, a spotlight on water conservation has spread all over the world.

With the help of smart water management, one of the five basic elements of nature can be conserved for the future. Further, many IoT-related researches are to be focused on effective monitoring of water quality. While researchers promote the ideas towards water management, there arises a need to maintain the sustainability of water for future usage with the successful deployment of IoT, Cloud Technologies and Big Data.

1.2 Preliminaries

This section briefly explains the preliminaries related to Industry 4.0, namely IoT and Smart Cities. Out of various appliances involved in SC, Smart Water Management System (SWMS) is highlighted.

1.2.1 Internet World to Intelligent World

A tremendous shift of technology from the Internet world to the intelligent world is conveyed by the trending phrase "Internet of Things". As modern societies have turned to round-the-clock connectivity, IoT fits their needs. Recently, many researchers have redefined the term IoT according to the applications developed. It includes transportation, healthcare, mining and many more. A mathematical language of IoT is expressed by the conceptual framework of 2020 as [7], IoT= Sensor + Network + Data + Services.

IoT services will be gained from all living and nonliving things which either request or offer a service. The inter-connectivity between all the things is made possible with microcontrollers, sensors and actuators. IoT provides promising smart solutions which have arisen due to dramatic urbanization as shown in Figure 1.1 [8]. Several scientific and engineering applications have emerged rapidly with the help of IoT. Solutions on IoT can be addressed with the recent technologies such as Robotics, Radio-frequency identification (RFID), Wireless Communication, Cloud Computing and Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS).

1.2.2 Architecture of IoT System

Various architectures on IoT are designed with respect to the smart functionalities provided by the system. In this typical system, middleware is the main component as it combines infrastructure and services together. In this Figure 1.2 [8], the combining factor of the Real World Data with the semantic web for providing services is through Linked Sensor Middleware (LSM). Also, nowadays various IoT architectures have been designed with Cloud-based Middleware infrastructure.

Figure 1.1 Comparison between the estimated world population and the projected number of smart devices connected to the Internet: 2015-2025.

Figure 1.2 Characterization of the technologies in IoT-enabled smart cities.

Generally, primary components involved in IoT architecture are application, sensors, processors and gateways. The major zone of IoT framework for users to utilize the gathered data is application. Sensors help in sensing the environment and to learn the functionalities of assembled things in order to make the actuators respond. The brain of the IoT framework is considered...