Use of the smart technology for water quality control: feedback from large-scale experimentation

The main purpose of drinking water network is to ensure safe quality of water to users. However, accidental contamination and malicious attacks in water networks can degrade the water quality. Such critical events threat the human health and lead to harmful diseases. Water utilities are concerned by the control of water quality. Since conventional methods based on laboratory analyses require several days, online control technology presents good opportunity to rapid detection of any water contamination. Devices based on smart technology have been developed for real-time control of the water quality. However, the use of these devices is recent and yet requires investigations. This paper presents feedback of the use of the smart technology in a large-scale experimentation conducted at the campus of Lille University within the European project "SmartWater4Europe". Two devices are used: S::CAN, which measures various parameters such as Conductivity and Turbidity and EventLab, which measures the variation of the refractive index. This paper presents the implementation of these devices, data storage and management as well as analysis of recorded data.