Conservation measures by Cape Town residents, businesses and government have helped to stave this off at least until 2019, but the situation remains dire.
Hydro-power At the same time, many cities and regions rely heavily on hydro-power as a source to address current electricity demands, and are increasing its use in addressing sustainability goals.
Smarter water In recent years, for example, ICT platforms have emerged that can bring greater intelligence to water distribution, hydro-electric power generation and both stormwater and wastewater management systems.
These networks are designed to transport the data and support a variety of emerging and legacy critical applications, which can help streamline operations and increase efficiency — saving money along the way.
These newer packet-based networks can be tailored specifically to the needs of utility operations, addressing stringent requirements for security, reliability and resiliency, which is particularly important for these services on which so many communities depend.
Utilities of all kinds are exploring the use of IoT technologies to reach farther out into their systems by deploying connected sensors that can gather information — including data from quite literal “dumb” pipes (i.e. those that just carry water).
In flood-prone cities, having access to data about water levels is critical to reducing the risk of flooding.
To help identify these sources of leakage more quickly and provide the information needed to take quick corrective action, sensors can be deployed in water supply systems.
What they can do, however, is help ensure that the water systems used to manage distribution, power generation and flood abatement perform as effectively as possible, providing the information needed to mitigate problems quickly, and the capacity for new applications to secure this vital resource.
Increasing the intelligence of the network that supports a city’s water infrastructure would be a smart move, especially as every other area of these cities become “smarter” as well.