Cloud Computing Solutions For Aiding Urban Water Management

The management of Urban Water Systems is a complex problem to not only under viewpoint of water supply but also storm water and sewer systems. Growth of urban areas, rise of the social class and economic empowerment of population mainly in developing countries have caused significant changes under water cycle. Several tools are needed to help water managers in the decision making process. In addition, the availability of these tools may be helpful in providing the regulatory body of rational frameworks for the policy-level decisions. Considering last advances of Information Technology (IT), such as the development of multi-core processors, virtualization, distributed storage, broadband Internet and automatic management, a new type of computing mode (cloud computing) has been produced. It can concentrate all the computing resources and manage them automatically by the software without intervene. Currently, the understanding of cloud computing under water sector still has not completely validated. However, cloud solutions using GPRS/GSM and Internet certainly have helped small water utilities manage better their system without huge investments; when compared to SCADA conventional systems. This paper presents three different applications of cloud computing solutions in Brazil. The first problem is monitoring water loss in real time. The second is to monitor rain and storm drainage system in order to produce alert systems and design parameters. Finally, cloud solutions were adopted for monitoring water consumption of households. Advantages and disadvantages were discussed and results were statically treated in order to generate future investigations