Smart Transformation in Drinking Water Distribution

By aya mohsen Last updated Jul 15, 2025 365 0

Contents

1 Drinking Water Distribution System

Water is a global necessity, impacting nearly every aspect of life. However, managing traditional drinking water distribution systems (DWDS) has become increasingly challenging due to challenges such as water scarcity and deteriorating water quality. To enhance water security and efficiency, smart water technologies have recently been introduced. Smart water is revolutionizing the water sector.

Drinking Water Distribution System

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, DWDS connects raw water sources to end users through a series of components, the keys of which include pipe networks, storage infrastructures, and appurtenances. Generally, the aim of drinking water distribution system construction is divided into two steps. The basic step is to allocate adequate portable drinking water to customers with sufficient pressure, and the second step is to provide them with stable water and higher quality. To achieve these goals, great efforts such as scientific investigations and huge capital investments have been devoted worldwide.

Water Security

Guaranteeing access to safe and portable drinking water is crucial to public health and social stabilization. As mentioned by the World Bank in its 2021 annual report, over 2 billion people are in shortage of safely managed drinking water. Further, at least 2 billion people drink contaminated water with feces, posing a great threat to drinking water safety. With the help of smart water technology applications, more integrated and comprehensive solutions are able to be provided in both quantity and quality guarantees.

Quantity Guarantee

Determining the amount of drinking water is the basic step for a drinking water distribution system, while water demands are not static in real life. It is affected by dynamic natures, such as precipitation, atmosphere, and humidity. Accurate forecasts with the help of smart techniques, especially for domestic use, enable water utilities to design, manage, and optimize with more reasonable costs and higher efficiency. Smart water techniques involve drinking water demand simulation mainly in three parts: data collection, model setup, and prediction. Ultrasonic sensors and smart water meters are preferred in continuous and real-time consumption data collection for the dataset generation.

Quality Guarantee

Conventional monitoring and measurements of water quality are often discontinuous and non-instant. In contrast, smart water quality is monitored remotely by means of real-time data acquisition, transmission, and processing, based on which evaluation, prediction, and risk management can also be conducted. Optical eventLab, a probe developed by Optiqua Technologies, provides a real-time online monitoring solution to continuously measure color, organics, and turbidity. This sensor with the risk assessment approach is used in the European Project ‘SmartWater4Europe’ to detect early water contamination, providing clues in identifying priorities of contaminants. An automated Internet of Things (IoT)-based water quality monitoring system is able to detect various water bodies remotely in real-time by using Arduino to integrate multiple sensors and a GSM module.

Water Efficiency

In drinking water distribution networks, water efficiency commonly refers to the water loss reduction during collection and transportation. Losses caused by pressure, water consumption, pipe materials, distance, aging, low maintenance, and other reasons have aroused great trouble around the world. As main sources of non-revenue water losses, leaks can lead to precious resource waste, potential health risks, and safety dangers. Traditional methods like acoustic detection are proved to be greatly affected by outside factors. Smart water applications could be ascribed to three parts: assessment, detection, and control. Hydraulic parameters like water flow and pressure are measured and monitored by a set of sensors continuously. Extensive platforms are used for data processing, integration, analysis, and decision-making. A workflow based on the KNIME platform combining water balance and the minimum night flow approach was developed to access leakage automatically at a large-scale campus.

Constraints

By now, most smart water technologies are merely applied to DWDSs on a laboratory scale, while few are in large district metered areas. One of the most obvious reasons is that the high investment and costs will not be recovered overnight. Sensors, monitors, meters, and hardware are basic needs, followed by technical support like programming, database setup, operation, and maintenance. As a complicated system, positive adoption is also expected, while smart water applications often lack leadership support due to an absence of understanding [10] in reality, especially for cities with small populations. Data security is an emerging risk restricting households from using smart water applications due to privacy leaks and cyberattacks that often occur. Recorded users’ personal information and living habits might be used illegally, which requires strong protection strategies.

Case Study

Chandrashekar et al. conducted research on domestic water usage with multiple linear regression for small-scale household consumption. 12 random forest models are applied by Xenochristou et al. to show that the weather becomes valuable when predicting water demand under hot temperatures. In spite of geographical limitations, natural events such as seawater intrusion, drought, and contamination result in insufficient drinking water resources to meet national daily demands. In addition, pipe bursts and leakage problems in drinking water supply systems are increasing to unexpected high levels. The Smart Water Grid based on ICT (information and communication technology) is developed to enable reliable resource risk management by integrating all water infrastructure, including alternative resources like desalinated water. The South East Queensland (SEQ) Water Grid from Australia and the Water Supply Network Department in Singapore have successfully applied this new approach. In this grid, water can be controlled and moved to the needed place by using bi-directional water pipelines, and multiple alternative resources can be introduced to solve the water scarcity problem.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that smart water applications could lead to a better understanding of DWDSs and then well-organized management. This review summarizes smart water applications from the perspective of water security and water efficiency, aiming to help researchers sort out general process when it comes to smart requirements on DWDSs. The whole intelligent process is basically divided into data collection, data transmission, and data analysis. Not only real-time data is available, but also warnings and predictions could be generated by ensuring both drinking water quantity and quality combined with instant

leakage detection and remediation. Although limitations of smart water applications are apparent, we could still be confident in their long-term robustness and flexibility. The next step is to make applications cost-efficient. Besides, all application solutions contain a standardized network core that guarantees standard data communication and also complies with safety and cybersecurity requirements.

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