There is a special need to be able to analyse and foresee short-future water consumption (in the case of supply) or flow and water quality (in the case of wastewater collection, treatment and reuse) in order to adapt or optimize the system according to such conditions. Ideally, the utility would need to have real-time acquisition of heterogeneous data so that a series of patterns or trends can be obtained and use them for an optimal water system management in the case such special conditions exist.
Use cases are:
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the crossing of water consumption with social network data in the case of an event (e.g. TV broadcast, local sport event) to optimize the supply;
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cross-relating water consumption, meteorological data, wastewater flow and water quality (salinity) to optimize the parameters of conductions and wastewater treatment stations, identifying saline water intrusion spots (from the water table) into the network.
Alicante aims to incorporate the following objectives:
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Ensuring a balance between short time water availability and demand by creating an IoT environment with the available infrastructure;
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Ensuring strategic continuity of the service;
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Strategic management of infrastructure by homogenization of subsystems in water management systems with the aim of improving the communication paradigms and higher granularity;
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Environmental integration and sustainability;
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Reduction of operational costs;
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Optimization of the waste water treatment process in order to maximize water reuse, while reducing energy consumption