IET Wireless Sensor Systems

Case Study

Detection and avoidance of water loss ISSN 2043-6386

Received on 16th April 2019
Revised 19th June 2019
through municipality taps in India by using Accepted on 9th July 2019
E-First on 18th September 2019
smart taps and ICT doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2019.0081
www.ietdl.org

Hitesh Mohapatra1 , Amiya Kumar Rath1,2

1Computer Science and Engineering, Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, India
2National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore, India
E-mail: hiteshmahapatra@gmail.com

Abstract: Global climate change and the rapid population growth have been seriously impacting water sources. The existing
traditional water distribution network (WDN) fails to manage proper water distribution according to the consumption rate. The
current situation demands an intelligent water management and treatment model to keep water available in the long run.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is a combination of the Internet of Things and information which introduces
machine-to-machine communication with data for management. An ICT-based WDN which helps in monitoring excessive water
supply and preventing water loss is proposed. The designed architecture is based on a heterogeneous wireless sensor network
(WSN) and a smart tap which detects water loss and communicates the report to the utility centre. A fault-tolerant WSN routing
scheme to handle the faulty situation during the transmission process is also proposed. The district of Sambalpur in Odisha,
India is the chosen location for this study.

1 Introduction collective intelligence (CI). A combination of AI and CI brings a

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend of a large
number of people moving towards urban living. As per the forecast
in [1, 2] by 2030 more than 60% of the population will live in an
urban environment [3]. Some of the systems that can address the
challenges related to the increased population will contribute to the
development of smart cities. The smart city concept operates in a
complex urban environment, incorporating several complex
systems of infrastructure, human behaviour, technology, social and
political structures and the economy [2, 4]. A smart city provides
an intelligent way of managing components such as transport,
health, energy, homes and buildings and the environment [5–8].
In India over the past five decades, the transition from rural to
urban has been transformative [9–13]. The growth in the urban
population in India is the biggest demographic drama that the
world has ever seen [14]. The trend of urbanisation is no way
different in comparison with the rest of the world [15, 16]. The
compulsive movement from rural areas to urban cities has created
more mega-cities although these are poorly developed [17]. The
growth of the urban population exceeded 222 million in 1990 (26%
of the total population) to 410 million (32% of the total population)
in 2014 and it is expected to be 814 million (50% of the total
population) in 2050. The current ratio of urbanisation in India is
lesser than China (54%), Indonesia (53%), Mexico (79%), Brazil
(85%) and Russia (74%) [2]. The expectation is that by 2050 India
will be the second in rank in the context of urbanisation [18]. The
current survey says by 2030 the number of Indian mega-cities will
be seven from five (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and
Bangalore) the new additions will be (Ahmedabad and Hyderabad)
[19].
1.1 Definition of smart
The behaviours of human beings are cognitive as it is based upon
individuals learning, perceiving, presenting and planning [20, 21].
The artificialisation of the human brain introduced the term
artificial intelligence (AI). The objective of AI is to perceive the
environment by applying intelligence and accordingly to make the
right decisions. On the other hand, the intelligence which is the
output of intellectual cooperation of the community for fabricating,
innovating, exchanging knowledge, learning and invention is called
smart environment [22]. The lack of universally accepted definition
for ‘SMART’ invites a few supportive components which are
working together for taking quick actions and making effective
decisions [23–26]. Each component is designed and assigned with
explicit function according to its capability of monitoring the
environment, generating data, work autonomous and collaboration.
The combination of AI and CI generates cognition. The translation
of cognition into the urban sphere brings smartness in a traditional
city. The smart city function can be defined as data gathering,
information evaluation, monitoring, future predictions, learning, CI
and collaborative problem-solving [27]. The information trending
over a social network about Information and Communications
Technologies (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) differs from
practical opportunities [3, 17]. Each society has its way of
assigning importance and priority, hence it can choose the
definition of ‘SMART’ differently. The focus of IoT and ICT is not
only limited to a large investment and technological growth but
also to provide reliable services during the harsh situation. In this
context, the fault-tolerant mechanism is indeed for the
uninterrupted service and proper utilisation of resources.
The major components of a smart city are smart water (SW),
smart gird, smart parking, smart health etc. In this state-of-the-art
set-up, we propose a SW solution as a stepping stone towards SW
management. It was rightly said by the union minister of India that
India is not suffering from water scarcity rather India is suffering
because of inadequate water management systems [19]. Hence,
with this line of thought, we propose a SW management system to
avoid water wastage by public stand posts in the Sakhipara area of
Odisha state, India. The total work is the combination of two parts.
The first one is the design and deployment of smart taps (STs) and
the second one is about sensing and collecting data from the
physical environment and transmitting it to the remotely located
utility centre (UC).
1.2 Definition of SW
The definition of SW varies from country to country and zone to
zone. Moreover, bringing smartness is a cumulative task which is
why just by making any one particular aspect of water smart, it
cannot be considered as a SW-system [28]. In the process of
conversion, i.e. from ‘Water’ to ‘Smart Water’ there are many

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Fig. 1 SW definitions
technologies involved such as the wireless sensor network (WSN),
IoT, ICT and embedded technology [29]. The world observed
September 18 as World Water Day. The definition of SW is
ubiquitous as it is the combination of many sub-smart-water
concepts. The SW project facilitates several benefits such as:
i. Real-time monitoring of equipment condition for preventive
actions like pipe condition checking, pipe replacement policy
and pipe leakage detection. The use of sensors and sensor
network helps to get this information from the remote end
which helps to ensure the quality and quantity of water [30].
ii. Real-time water quality-checking to ensure hygiene enhances
the water network QoS [31].
iii. Real-time water distribution and consumption monitoring. The
process like SW metering [32], priority-based water
channelisation and weather-based water supply and
consumption monitoring are the various approaches towards
efficient water conservation.
All said approaches towards SW demands heterogeneous types of
data from various sub-operations. The collection of data from a
remote end can be done by sensors and transmitting the collected
data is possible by WSN. However, with regard to communication
using heterogeneous devices which can be achieved by adopting
IoT technologies and for managerial tasks and decision-making
processes, the role of ICT is inevitable. Fig. 1 presents various
definitions of SW.
1.3 Motivation
Water is an integral and limited resource. It is essential for many
applications as drinking water, growing food crops, operating
factories, swimming, surfing, fishing and sailing etc. [33]. Of all of
the above, it is the source of life for all living beings on earth [34].
Interestingly, the human body itself is made up of more than 70%
of water. In the current situation, most of the people do not realise
the real value of drinking water and more amount of water is
getting wasted through many uncontrolled ways [35]. This problem
is quite related to poor water allocation [36], inefficient use and
lack of adequate and integrated water management systems [37].
The potent barriers in implementing an efficient water management
system are basically households, offices and public stand posts
[38].
Another way of approaching SW is monitoring the quality of
surface-water which will help in protecting our waterways from
getting polluted [34]. Farmers can use this information to manage
their land and crops in a better way [1]. Our local, state and
national governments use this information for monitoring
population control, water leakages and loss levels [39, 40]. The
main reason for water scarcity is improper management of water
distribution and lack of control of excessive water supply [41].
According to ‘The Hindu’ newspaper, an average Indian utilises
about 150–200l of water a day, where per day 10l is consumed for
cooking and drinking, 40l on washing dishes, clothes, floor and 85l
is utilised for bathing and toilet flushing [42, 43]. Water pipes that
supply water to villages and many remote places are not
maintained and regulated properly, which causes serious water loss
and difficult to find the faulty location [44]. Particularly in India, as
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the second highest in the population most of the time enormous
amount of water is wasted through municipality pipes or taps by
excess water supply and a lack of information regarding the usage
of water. In India, the very common picture of water wastage is the
surplus amount of water supply to the consumer without assuring
its proper use. During our local survey in Sambalpur, Odisha,
India, it was found that there are several municipality pipes on
which few consumers are dependent, yet there is no difference in
the water supply-level between a crowded and a less-crowded
place. The careless attitude of people leads to substantial water
wastage in both the scenarios. From the survey results on water
supply at Sambalpur, Odisha, India, there are 38,082 (By 2011)
[45] [Source: Service Level Improvement Plan (SLIP) 2015]
municipality pipe connections provided for consumption and
mostly it was found that a heavy amount of water was wasted
because of improper knowledge and management. Hence, our
objective is to help with the detection and avoidance of water loss
through municipality taps by using the IoT and ICT.
2 State-of-the-art
Around the world many countries have been investing a lot of
money in the SW deployment process [46]. Since the future water
shortages require immediate action on the development of
resources handling, reduction of the gap between demand and
supply and higher efficiency in treatment and transmission.
2.1 Well-known SW projects
In this section, we present the existing SW-solutions and the
countries which have already adopted different SW models. With
the growing threat of future water scarcity, many countries have
started adopting the SW process. In Brazil, IBM has installed a
three-dimensional prediction model for evaluating the efficient
utilisation of water and land development [3]. In the United States
at Hudson River, IBM deployed a real-time water sensor network
for online monitoring of water usage [3]. IBM also set up a project
in the Netherlands to predict the possibility of a flood. The South
East Queensland (SEQ) SW-network in Australia and the water-
recycling network in Singapore are examples of SW deployments.
Many cities of China like Take-Wuxi, Shenzhen and Shanghai have
adopted the SW-process to know the status of water conservancy
and to predict to avoid an alarming future situation. The integrated
urban water management (IUWM) strategy is another step towards
SW where the water authorities ensure urban water security. In the
same context, several end-use based studies have been conducted
by many countries like Sri Lanka [5], New Zealand, United States
of America [6] and the United Kingdom. Every year many such
studies have been operated by the water authorities to create
awareness among end-users about water and its value. Especially,
in India, ‘smart city with SW’ is an active project launched by the
government on 25 June 2016 headed by the prime minister [1]. The
SW-project in India is based on customer relations and billing
management (CRBM) model which generates data from the user-
end of the SW-system [19]. The hygienic perspective always
demands the continuous monitoring of water quality, and in this
context, the MOBile watEr quality SENsor System (MOBESEN's)
project is significant [32]. In this project, a specific system and
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Table 1 Well-known SW projects
Year Location Project Objective
2009 [33] Sonora, Mexico NEP-HEP To investigate the relationship between general environmental beliefs and water
conservation behaviour.
2008 [33] Europe MOBESEN's To monitor the water quality of lakes.
2010 [33] Brazil Brasil Pernambuco To water sector management and institutional development.
Sustainable water
2011 [33] USA Hundson River Online monitoring of water usage
2011 [33] Latin America and IUWM To collect data about end-user water system
Caribbean
2016 [34] India CRBM To collect data about end-user water system
2016 [33] Australia SEQ To collect data about end-user water system
2016 [33] The Netherlands SEQ To collect data about end-user water system
2018 [35] Europe and Central DWP To support the improvement of: (i) Water sector related institutions, policies and
Asia regulations in participating countries from the Danube region and (ii) the
sustainability of DWP developed activities.
2018 [33] Bangladesh Bangladesh – BD: Rural To increase the provision of safe water supply and hygienic sanitation in rural
Water Supply Project areas.
2018 [33] Europe ISFETs To monitor ion concentration in water.

Fig. 2 SW solution and techniques taxonomy

special sensors were deployed to monitor the water quality of the
lake. Along the same line, the project ion-selective field effect
transistors (ISFETs) also contributed significantly [46]. The goal of
the project was to gauge ion concentration in water, for this, the
blind source separation (BSS) algorithm [46] is used which was
designed to maintain the continuity in the monitoring process.
Table 1 represents some of the well-known SW projects operated
in various corners of the world. There exist many more water
projects but, as the scope of this paper is limited, all are not
highlighted here.
A different aspect of SW, i.e. solving the water problem in
petroleum well is executed under the project called SMART Agua
[11]. In 2003 an investigation carried out by New Environment
Paradigm-Human Exception Paradigm between environmental
beliefs and water conservation [6]. In 2018 the World Bank funded
a new project called Danube region water and wastewater sector
capacity building programme (DWP) to improve the water security
and expand wastewater storage capacity [30]. There are few
projects which were launched for the rural sector, one of them is
the BD Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project, funded by the
World Bank with the objective of supplying safe water and
maintaining hygienic sanitation in the rural areas of Bangladesh
[47]. In the same context, another project called Brazil Pernambuco
Sustainable Water was started in 2010 to improve the water quality
and secure water resources [48, 49].
2.2 Proven technologies for SW
This section expounds the connotation of SW and explores the
amalgamation of ICT and IoT with existing water architecture for
social and economic benefit. Here, we analyse the successful SW-
schemes with respect to the technologies involved. In Fig. 2 we
present a taxonomy based on technology and approaches adopted.
2.2.1 Smart pipe: The combination of pipes and taps is one of the
basic components of the water distribution process. The
underground deployment of pipelines is more vulnerable to faults
or leakages as it is surrounded by soil and many other materials.
Any leakage in pipelines causes substantial financial loss and
serious health problems. Hence, many types of research related to
smart pipes were proposed. The smart pipe is usually embedded
with a sensor which is responsible for the detection of leakage and
communicates the leakage coordinates with the UC over wireless
transmission [30, 36, 37].
2.2.2 Smart tap: With this line of thought for SW, the very
essential step is to make the environment also smart. The term
environment includes end-user and assets. SW delivery must be
equipped with smart devices. The outlet of any water delivery
system is a tap. The traditional tap is not capable of monitoring the
water flow which leads to a severe wastage of water. Hence, the
normal tap needs to be converted into a smart tap (ST) by adding
some amount of intelligence to it. The integration of IoT with a
normal tap enables it to sense the presence of an object in front of
the tap; accordingly, the tap will decide to flow the water or not,
and by this process, the extra usage of water and wastage of water
can be handled [31, 50]. Our core focus of research is on
developing a ST for public stand posts.
2.2.3 SW distribution network (WDN): To resolve the issue of
non-uniform water distribution among various belts like an
industrial belt, residential belt and emergency situations, an

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Fig. 3 Development plan of Sambalpur by 2030 source: http://
www.sdasambalpur.in
information technology-based infrastructure and environmental
sensor deployment are required. The smart WDN has to be capable
of performing dynamically with a dynamic data set which is
generated on the basis of situations and demands [32, 36, 50].
2.2.4 Smart storage: In India, awareness regarding the value of
water as a finite resource is lower than in other countries of the
world because of overpopulation. Smart storage is one of the major
components of the SW system. The normal water tanks lead to a
severe wastage of water because of unregulated overflow
situations. The unaware attitude of people leads to heavy water
loss. As it is very tough to make people smart, an easy way is to
make devices smart enough to do away with human intervention.
The smart storage normally deployed with the SW-level sensors
which detect the water level in the tank, and once the water level
reaches its threshold, the power supply of the pump will be
switched off automatically [22, 51].
3 Case study: Sambalpur
3.1 Area profile
In the north-western part of Odisha, the district of Sambalpur is
located 323 km far away from the state capital. The territory of
Sambalpur is bounded by four districts Baragarh to the west,
Jharsuguda to the north, Bolangir district to the south and Deogarh
to the east [45]. The town is located alongside the Mahanadi river
which is spread over an area of 33.7 sq km. The population of the
town as per the 2001 census was 1,53,643 and in the year 2011, it
was 1,83,147 with a slum population of 74,131, i.e. 40% of the
total population [45]. According to the 2011 census, the total
number of households in Sambalpur was 41,411 in which 26,595
were slum households [45]. The urban map of Sambalpur, India is
illustrated in Fig. 3.
3.2 Objective behind the study
The proposed work is based on the intensive simulation and
analysis work carried out in Sambalpur town of Odisha, India
during February 2019. However, the proposed work is confined to
one suburb, i.e. Sakhipara of Sambalpur town. The objective of our
work is:
i. To explore the problems related to the WDN in Sambalpur
area.
ii. To understand and ensure the water consumption at different
public water supply points.
3.3 Why is Sambalpur considered as the study area?
Although there are many towns in Odisha, Sambalpur has been
selected for the study for a specific reason. The water scarcity in
Sambalpur is quite severe because of the growth of industries in the
periphery of the town. This growth of industrialisation brought a
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Table 2 Simulation parameters
Parameters Values
network size 100 × 100
simulator CupCarbon U-One 3.8.2
number of nodes 21
data packet size 512 bits
ST position static
data packet period 1s
great challenge to fulfill the demands of water consumption of the
residential belt. The water scarcity news of Sambalpur, India is
presented in Table 2.
3.4 Water resources at Sambalpur, India
During the ground survey, it was observed that Sambalpur suffers
from acute water wastage. Especially in summer, people are neither
get drinking water nor water for domestic use. There are several
causes which lead to the wastage of water. The very basic and
primary cause is unawareness among people about the scarcity of
water and value of water. The second major cause is the inadequate
water management system. As per the topographical structure of
Sambalpur, the availability of water is not a problem, the problem
lies with the communication gap between the municipality and the
consumer. The poor pipelines and unequal distribution of water
invite serious dissatisfaction among consumers. The uneven
distribution of water means the municipality supplies more water to
the industrial belt rather than for agriculture and the poor pipelines
lead to the problem of water theft and unnecessary water supply.
From the primary survey, it was observed that 40–50% of the
population including both slum and non-slum areas is dependent on
the public water stand post. In 2013 the Urban Water Policy claims
100% piped water connection, whereas the survey concludes only
33% of households have piped water connection in the non-slum
area and only 1% of the slum population has piped water
connection. Fig. 4 illustrates the possible water resources for both
slum and non-slum areas.
Initially, the plan was to supply 70l per capita per day (LPCD),
whereas in 2013 that progressively increased to 135 LPCD but
according to Service Level Improvement Plan (SLIP), Atal Mission
for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), 2015
report the current LPCD is 185.6l. Our survey from the
municipality office and Sambalpur Development Authority (SDA)
concludes that the current water supply per individual is <70% and
about 218l is getting supplied per household. In Table 3 the status
of water supply connection is illustrated.
As shown in Fig. 5 and Table 4, it was understood that the
majority of the population is dependent upon public tap. The
statistics of demand and supply is presented in Table 4 which
shows total around 965 standing posts on which 40% of the
population is dependent.
At a rate of 135 LPCD, a total of 26.42 million litres per day is
the current supplying rate of Sambalpur town. A total number of
618 hand pumps (HP) and tube wells (TW) are installed by the
SDA. Approximately 11,365 household connections have been
made by the SDA [45]. The current survey motivates the designing
of a ST as the majority of the population is dependent on public
taps. The ST can reduce the wasting of a substantial amount of
water by stopping the oversupply of water from the UC.
4 Proposed work
The primary objective of the proposed work is to predict, from a
remote end, the proper utilisation of the water supplied. In this
process, the major technologies which are involved are ICT and
IoT. The IoT is responsible for sensing and communicating the data
from the remote end. The role of ICT is to process and analyse the
collected data for generating a report for decision making. The
important components of this whole process are ‘Smart Tap’ (ST),
UC and WSN. The proposed work is a combination of two major
tasks such as (1) designing of ST which is IoT-based and (2)
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Fig. 4 Source of drinking water source: http://www.sdasambalpur.in

Table 3 Status of water supply

Indicators Present status MoUD benchmark
coverage of water supply connections 30.0% 100%
per capita supply of water 185.6 135
extent of metering of water connections 0.0% 100%
extent of non-revenue water 67.9% 20%
quality of water supplied 98.0% 100%
cost recovery in water supply services 42.5% 100%
efficiency in collection of water supply related charges 37.9% 90%

Fig. 6 Generic life cycle for smart applications

Fig. 5 ST performance

Table 4 Demand and supply

Demand in Supply in Total no. of Total no. of
LPCD LPCD functional HP and public taps
TWs
135 litres 218 litres 618 965

decision making by UC which is an ICT application. With this line
of thought, we propose a generic model which is applicable for all
systems which are on the verge of conversion to the smart system.
This is applicable for all applications which need to be prefixed
with the term ‘SMART’. Fig. 6 illustrates the proposed Collect–
Communicate–Process–Analyse–Improve (CCPAI) model.
4.1 Implementation and analysis of the ST
The experimental set-up of the proposed ST is a combination of
several components such as the ultrasonic sensor (USS), normal
sensor (NS) (SenseCeiver PCB Wireless Sensor Gateway-2G) and
Arduino Uno micro-controller. The water level can be monitored in
two ways: either with contact or without contact. Contact methods
are resistive, capacitive and inductive methods, whereas contactless
methods use optics, radar and USSs. Contactless methods do not
affect the quality of water (e.g. USS) which is beneficial for health.
According to the contactless method, the core method is the
propagation of signal and to record the time variation of the echo-
signal, where the signals may be optics, radar signal or sound. The
choice of USS over optics and radar is because, in the case of
optics the chances of the sensor getting dirty is high which may
create a fault in the process and in the case of the radar signal, it
Fig. 7 Water loss, water usage tracking by ST
(a) Water loss scenario, (b) Water usage scenario
has a high frequency which is hazardous for daily use. The USS
HC-SRF04 has two sensors: one is for transmitting sound waves
and the other one is for receiving the echo sound wave. Initially,
the transmitter of USS propagates sound waves which are reflected
back if there is an object in front of the waves, then the receiver
sensor detects the reverted waves and calculates the time interval
between transmission and receiving of the signal. The time T can
be converted into distance d by using (1) and (2)
d = (T × Speed)/2 (1)
Here, the speed of sound in air is considered
d = (T × Speed of Sound in Air (340 m/s))/2 (2)
The calculated distance denoted as d is communicated to the NS
with the help of Arduino Uno. The Adruino Uno acts a like bridge
between the USS and NS. Fig. 7 illustrates the prototype of the
proposed ST. The hardware configurations have been illustrated in

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Fig. 8 Hardware components used in ST network
Fig. 9 Data flow model of proposed SW
Fig. 8. The integration of NS and USS at the inlet point of each
municipality tap makes it a ST.
4.2 Design of the SW system
In Sambalpur, India, the water supply timing is 8:00 AM to 9:00
AM and 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM. In Fig. 7 the proposed process model
of the SW system is illustrated. We have recorded the value of
morning session where the distance d recorded at time instance T
where, ti = 1, 2, 3, …, 60. The downward propagation of sound will
gauge the level of water. The presence of a bucket with water will
reflect by calculating the time of the echo signal by using (2). The
usage of water can be monitored remotely by observing the
continuous variation in the d value computed from echo signals.
The absence of a water bucket or overflow of water can be
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recorded by looking at the consistency in d value. In the case of
water loss, the UC will provide tolerance of 5 min. In that tolerance
period if there is a change in the d factor, then the water supply will
continue as per pre-schedule or else the water supply will be
stopped. Fig. 9 illustrates the process flow model.
The deployed USS starts recording the distance d from the
water level with time instance ti. If a container is present, the value
of d gradually decreases which concludes the consumption of
water. In the case of no container, the value of d remains constant
which implies wastage of water here, the UC provides tolerance of
5 min as a timer, after time out and the water supply will be
stopped by UC. This recorded d value is communicated over the
WSN by using NS with the UC, and then, the UC makes decisive
action by using ICT. Table 5 represents the recorded values by USS
at different point in time T, where ti = 1, 2, 3, …n. The d.1
represents the recorded value of d during container presence
whereas d.2 denotes the water loss situation. Here, it is clearly
reflected that the value of d continuously keeps changing during
the presence of container, whereas in the case of no water bucket
the d value remains unchanged.
4.3 Simulation
In this section, we present a statistical analysis of water
conservation by deploying ST. We have compared the previous
water wastage against proposed water saving. Second, a WSN
model with a fault-tolerant routing scheme has been proposed to
access these data from a remote end which handles link-based
fault. The blueprint of ST deployment is illustrated in Fig. 10.
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Table 5 Sensor recorded value
Time, s d.1, cm
1 26.71
2 25.84
3 25.12
4 24.47
5 24.31
6 23.68
7 22.46
8 21.85
9 20.46
10 19.74
Fig. 10 Blue print of ST deployment
Fig. 11 Consumption rate
In the implementation section, we have done a preliminary
assessment of a small area of Sambalpur known as Sakhipara
locality where we have recorded the amount of water loss through
public taps. The measurement axis considered the amount of water
loss by using a normal tap against the ST. Here, explicitly, the
water loss because of a broken valve or tap was considered during
this study. The analysis is done by observing the performance of
the ST for 5 continuous days. The amount of water conserved by
this corrective action is to the order of 17.04% of total water
supply. In Fig. 5 we present the simulation result by taking the ratio
of the total amount of water supplied to the total amount of water
efficiently consumed by the consumer. In Fig. 5 shows that a
maximum of 130.8l is efficiently consumed (ECmax) by the
consumer, and in the worst case, the minimum amount of water i.e.
(ECmin) is 95.57l. By using (3) we calculated the average efficient
water (ECavg) consumption rate as 113.18l.
(ECmax + ECmin)/2 = ECavg (3)
Fig. 11 illustrates the actual rate of consumption against the
supplied rate of water in terms of percentage calculation. Fig. 11
represents the best case and worst case of water consumption rate,
i.e. 95 and 70%, which concludes that on an average 82.96% of
water supply is actually consumed by the end-user, whereas the
report from government claims about 100% water consumption.
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d.2, cm
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
26.71
The actual consumption rate of water is calculated by the following
equation:
(ECavg /Totalsupply) × 100 (4)
The produced results prove that the implementation of the ST
saves nearly 17.04% of water. Table 6 represents the collected data
using a ST. LPCD is the unit of data. The values have been
recorded at different points in time according to the water supplied
by the SDA. (This table represents data in litres collected by STs
deployed at various locations of the Sakhipara geographical area.
The readings have been recorded in consecutive 5 days.)
5 Design and analysis of the fault-tolerant model
5.1 Fault-tolerant model
Normally, for a particular society multiple (Range 20–25) taps are
required to accommodate the demands of the consumers. The
dense deployment of taps creates a sensor network environment
which is why we propose a fault-tolerant mechanism as an
additional backup to the water communication network. The
amalgamation of WSN helps in both monitoring water usage and
making decisions from a remote location [52]. In Fig. 12 the
network of the ST is illustrated.
453

Table 6 Status of water consumption recorded by ST
Loc Day 1 Day 2
loc 1 117.456213 121.759462
loc 2 121.759462 114.785642
loc 3 114.147853 107.586472
loc 4 129.105468 118.856214
loc 5 102.478124 98.100265
Fig. 12 ST network
Fig. 13 Stages of SAR
The post-phase of ST deployment is to communicate the
calculated d with UC via NSs. The colonial structure of society
introduces the dense deployment of NS which introduces a cluster
architecture which is monitored by a dominant node called the sink
node. The sink node is responsible for collecting data from
individual NS of ST and forwarding that data to the UC for further
processing. The UC has its own custom-made management
information system (MIS) to use collected data.
According to the traditional architecture of the WSN, the sensor
node, i.e. the NS is constrained by a lack of resources such as
memory, energy and computational capacity. Architectural
constraint and wireless communication are frequently prone to
fault occurrence. In the proposed work, we explicitly concentrate
on link fault which is very common in the wireless environment.
The possible types of fault in the case of WSN are:
i. Node fault
ii. Link fault
5.2 Fault handling
The fault-handling mechanism is always a combination of two sub-
phases such as detection and correction. In our work, the detection
of a fault is managed by UC through ICT. At each interval of time,
the value d is getting updated at the MIS of UC. The unchanged
status in d reflects the sign of fault occurrence. In a ST network,
each ST has a unique identification number. In MIS, if any ST not
corresponding to a long period of time signifies where the fault
occurred. After the detection sub-phase, the correction sub-phase is
initiated.
5.2.1 Node fault: According to our proposed architecture, the
node refers to the NS of the ST network. The domestically
deployed NS can be faulty because of two major reasons. The first
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Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
114.147853 129.105468 102.478124
129.756421 112.748532 103.658974
117.459862 123.985642 121.785469
130.756199 119.785642 127.256478
95.568742 104.356478 124.785694
Fig. 14 Algorithm 1: shortest alternative route (SAR)
one is the physical damage of the ST or any components of the ST.
In this case, except for the replacement of tap or components, there
are no alternative solutions. The second type of fault occurrence is
that the NS can be dead because of energy depletion. In this case,
the NS can be energised by supplying any means of external power
as the NS is deployed in the domestic environment.
5.2.2 Link fault: In the case of link fault or path loss, the proposed
shortest alternative route (SAR) algorithm is used to provide
uninterrupted communication between NS and UC.
5.3 Description of the SAR working process
In Fig. 13 the working of SAR has been illustrated. The node SN1
is isolated due to the link fault. Then, SN1 generates a beacon
signal to know its nearest neighbour node. As SN4 was found the
nearest neighbour node, SN1 sets up a multi-hop path through SN4
to the BSS.
5.4 Networking model
The following assumptions are considered about the network:
i. Sensor nodes are statically deployed.
ii. As the sensor nodes are deployed in the domestic environment,
there is no constraint on resource.
iii. All SNs are allowed for direct communication with BS.
5.5 Algorithm description
The notations used for our algorithm (see Fig. 14) are:
• n: total number of NS.
• AN: associate node with a faulty route.
• NN: neighbour node.
• m: number of active NNs.
• Qi: the indexing of the NNs in queue.
• d j: Euclidean distance between AN and QNNi.
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© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019

Fig. 15 Deployment of sensor node in Sakhipara, India location
Fig. 16 Battery depletion rate
According to the SAR algorithm, the first step is to find out the
faulty route by referring to the MIS at the administrator end of UC.
After getting the information about the faulty route, the associated
node (AN) has been detected. The AN senses the active NN. All
NNs are stored in the queue QNNi where, i = 1, 2, 3, …, m. Then,
the Euclidean distance between the AN and QNNi has been
calculated. On finding the nearest NN, the AN forwards its data to
the nearest QNNi. This process will continue until the NN is the
same as the sink node.
5.6 Simulation
The implementation is done on a static ST-network. The NS of ST
is considered for routing simulation as these NSs need to transmit
the collected data with the UC. The other parameters which are
considered for simulation are listed in Table 2.
The simulation of the SAR algorithm is implemented in
CupCarbon U-one 3.8.2 to validate the performance of the
proposed model. The performance is analysed based on finding the
SAR for transmitting the data in the case of link fault occurrence.
The stagewise implementation of the SAR is illustrated in Fig. 12.
In Fig. 15, the total number of NS deployed is 20 excluding 1
BS or UC. The total number of isolated nodes is 4. Out of these
sets of isolated nodes, the NS with id ‘S16’ is disconnected with
the sink node because of the link fault. The aim of the SAR
algorithm is to sense the nearby active NN and the AN will
forward its data to the nearby NN. The nearby NN forwards that
data to the BS or UC. In Fig. 15 it can be seen that the NS(S16)
sensed S(21) as its nearby NN and forwarded its data to the sink
node through S(21).
The expected outcome of the SAR algorithm is to find the SAR
from the NS to UC. In the SW context, as the STs are deployed in a
domestic environment, there is no constraint of energy supply. The
dedicated link between NS and UC also discard the evaluation of
the routing scheme in terms of packet delivery ratio. In this
simulation, the focus is on finding an alternative path so that the
communication between the NS and UC should not break at any
point in time.
Fig. 16 shows the battery depletion rate of the ST network over
an isolated node and connected node. The X axis represents time
and Y axis represents a battery level of NSs. The blue-coloured
graph represents the additional energy consumption by the fault
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associate node whereas the cyan-coloured graph represents the
uniform battery depletion by the rest of the NSs.
6 Conclusion and future scope
The SW concept is a new dimension towards solving the present
and future water-scarcity problem. The current trend of research on
water primarily focuses on water distribution and treatment
methods; however, the practical deployment of SWS invites many
real-time problems. In this paper, we have analysed the existing
models of water supply and the claims made by the government on
water supply and consumption. In our study, the explicit focus has
been on water supply through public standard post or public tap.
The study was done in Sakhipara, Sambalpur, Odisha, India. In the
process of making things or systems advanced, we diagnosed the
loopholes of the existing system, i.e. a lake with inadequate
management of natural resources like water. Based on this line of
thought, we have proposed an integrated ST-network for
monitoring proper water consumption and operating it from a
remote end. In a country like India where the rate of unawareness
regarding water resource is so high, this kind of model is true to
save water for the future generations. The process of making things
smart always involves adopting a system life cycle by considering
this, so we have also proposed a generic model named CCPAI for
making things smart irrespective of the domain or application. The
current era of the digital world demands information on fingertips
which is possible by the integration of IoT and ICT. This state-of-
the-art, fault-tolerant routing scheme for the IoT environment has
been proposed to ensure the successful transmission process. In
addition to all of these, we also provide future research ideas in
Table 7 for novice researchers in the SW domain. The results of
our work have proved the efficiency of the proposed models.
Figs. 8 and 17 illustrate the sensitivity of the water issue in
Sambalpur, Odisha, India and a hardware configuration of the
proposed model, respectively. The adoption of the smart water
system model can save gallons of water on a daily basis, and it can
then be utilised for other purposes. The authors of this paper
strongly recommend this model to deal with future water scarcity
problems.
455

Table 7 Research challenges in smart water
Problem domains
ensuring the quality of the
supplied water
ensuring the proper use of
supplied quantity of water
ensuring scalability
ensuring sustainability
ensuring revenue generation
gauging ground water level
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Narrow specifications
1. Monitoring water quality of drinking water in accordance with the geographical location. 2. Gauging of
hygienic conditions of water in underground pipes. 3. Topographical water quality monitoring. 4. Water quality
monitoring in storage tank
2. Water wastage monitoring due to non-uniform water distribution. 3. Minimise the supply and demand gap.
4. Monitoring surplus water supply to households. 5. Development of measuring technique for per capita
water consumption.
1. SW deployment based on area coverage? 2. SW projects based on consumer density. 3. SW architecture
based on demand as a factor.
1. How to monitor unattainable deployments? 2. What kind of fault-tolerant mechanism needs to be provided
as backup? 3. Technique for specific SW applications? 4. How to provide adequate maintenance?
1. SW meter deployment. 2. Fault-tolerant mechanism for SW meter to avoid ambiguity in invoice generation.
3. Designing of prepaid water meter in rural zones.
1. Topographical water quantity monitoring. 2. Future forecasting of underground water movements.

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