IoT solutions for cloud monitoring and control of wastewater treatment plants

Waste-water treatment (WWT) plays a tremendous role for environmental health and quality of life. WWT installations are organized into geographically distributed technological units or complete WWT plants that are connected by means of communication technologies to a regional or central control center to deliver a holistic approach of real-time control and monitoring actions upon the special technological processes. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) are specialized control system architectures dedicated for performing this job. They comprise computers, networks for data communication, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) that interface sensors and actuators with process supervisory management units, and other control units to interface processes with installations and equipment. The key feature of a SCADA system is the capacity to perform a supervisory operation over a variety of other proprietary devices, using standard communication protocols. In this project we propose a solution for optimizing SCADA systems from a lifecycle perspective for the specific case of waste-water treatment units. Tests we have run on the proposed cloud-based SCADA system indicated a proper behavior. We investigated here disruptive technologies, which are at their primary stages of evolution on the S-curve. Thus, we recommend this SCADA architecture for non-critical WWT installations, not for the premium ones.