The water industry has been restricted in its ability to modernize. But as we’ve seen in so many other mission-critical industries, new technologies can and are changing this for the better when they’re incorporated on a wide scale into everyday operations. The creation of the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), through cloud-based technologies, has given remote access and real-time insights into an industry where a number of tight regulations and premiums have made utilities question whether significant modernization can be made while achieving compliance.
This process is complex, and there is no single solution that can fix that, but the addition of cloud-based platforms that offer remote visibility and real-time manual data entry can simplify and streamline a portion of the process that has been time-consuming and prone to errors. While many utilities question the risk of incorporating cloud-based monitoring and manual data entry platforms, the results have shown that not using them could actually put you at greater risk for quality and operational issues.
Part of the mission-critical nature of water utilities is ensuring water quality, mitigating issues as soon as possible, and proving due diligence to show that that the utility has taken the necessary action to preserve quality for the consumer. A portion of the monitoring process, limited solely to the control room in a water treatment plant, can be automated, but just because it’s automated doesn’t mean it’s the most effective.
Take, for example, the use of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). SCADA is the lifeblood of all automated water operations, acting as an information gateway with all data being sent through and pulled down from these systems. Millions of data points are sent through these systems daily, pulling from sensors that monitor water temperature, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and more. SCADA is great in a control room within a treatment plant where you have direct and constant access to the system, but to maintain constant visibility outside of these areas, a person must be logged into the control network via a virtual private network (VPN).
Issues can occur at any time, so having constant access is a must to stay in compliance. This is why remote visibility is so valuable and why more cloud-based monitoring technologies are now offering ways to gain visibility to select information without going through SCADA systems.
Cloud-based monitoring platforms now offer what historically only a VPN could provide — secure access to critical data. Without it, the team won’t know what or where issues are coming from.
