Let’s be honest, we don’t want to know the answer to the question, “What would the world be like if drinking water didn’t exist?” Thankfully, smart technology is playing an increasing role in protecting drinking water.
Nationwide, cities are finding ways to uses advances in wireless technology to meet the basic need of clean drinking water. Check out a few examples:
- It’s about clean water, dude: In rural California, remote wireless applications make clean water accessible to small communities that cannot afford on-site water monitoring technicians. UCLA researchers have created a system the size of a big-rig trailer, controlled by smartphones, which can turn 60,000 gallons of drain-off into clean drinking water for 80,000 people.
- Clean water, ya’ll: Atlanta, Georgia has partnered with Ericsson and AT&T to provide remote water quality monitoring in Atlanta, providing early detection of water contamination. The partnership enables the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an organization dedicated to protecting water in the Chattahoochee River Basin, to remotely monitor key watershed locations.
- Saddle up for clean water: Houston, Texas is using smart technology to empower individual community residents to safeguard the water they drink. For example, the University of Houston is creating inkjet-printed lenses that attach to smartphone cameras, making pathogens in water visible under magnification.
- It’s clean water, don’t cha know: In Akron, Ohio, wireless technology is being used to optimize overall water quality and reduce the costs of water management infrastructure. Local government invested in GE’s smart technologies to safeguard on one of the largest drinking water utilities in Ohio. Real-time water quality is analyzed and treated securely using a GE supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network of sensors.
We expect government and businesses continue to collaborate to secure the future of clean water access. Thanks to innovative partnerships between wireless companies and cities, we can ensure we have clean water for our community to drink for generations to come.