ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION // SPONSORED EDITORIAL
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO PREVENT WASTEWATER SPILLS AND REDUCE POLLUTION By using innovative technologies, water companies and councils can prevent wastewater spills and reduce pollution in the environment, as improved network visibility provides better monitoring of wastewater levels.
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astewater spills are a major contributor to the contamination of freshwater and marine ecosystems, with spills into the sea impacting bathing water quality and posing serious health risks and damage to marine ecosystems. Water companies often have poor network visibility as expensive remote monitoring equipment only covers crucial points, with responses to wastewater spills typically being reactionary. Blockages and collapsed sewers often go undetected, with control rooms inundated with high level alarms during wet weather events, due to the impact of rainfall on wastewater network levels. This results in environmental and reputational damage for utilities, increased expenditure to clean up spill damage, and fines issued by regulatory bodies. A growing population, industrial demands on the water network, and a changing regulatory landscape mean utilities, and councils, are under increased pressure to control spillages to prevent pollution. A PREEMPTIVE APPROACH TO PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT Poor network visibility can be significantly improved by the mass deployment of IoT (Internet of Things) and low-power technologies to monitor wastewater levels in real-time. Improving network performance and forecasting can also help to prevent wastewater spills and reduce pollution. When combining IoT technologies with smart machinelearning data analytics, it becomes possible to predict future spill incidents, as these platforms identify patterns and the capability of a pipeline to deal with an influx of rain. Metasphere works with utilities, providing hi-tech IoT solutions to intelligently manage wastewater networks by combining wastewater level data with historic, current, and forecast rainfall data. With the addition of machine-learning, utilities can now forecast up to 30 hours ahead to understand how a particular network will behave, whilst intelligent alarms allow control rooms to react to the most important spills. Early warnings of future spills by identifying partial blockages, means blockages can be proactively cleared to
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Winter 2022 // ISSUE 3
prevent wastewater spills before they happen, and reducing the clean up for councils.
ZERO POLLUTION Eliminating wastewater spills prevents fines for incidents that cause environmental and reputational damage. Technology goes a long way to support utilities in meeting zero pollution targets, but the wider community also has a role to play to eliminate pollution, such as being aware of what goes into systems that could create potential blockages. Metasphere technologies give utilities visibility of network performance, to help them prevent spills and reduce pollution by being able to respond quickly; preventing leaks and spills for a cleaner, greener world.
About Metasphere As a wastewater application specialist business, Metasphere has been providing monitoring solutions to the global utility industry since the mid-1980s. The company liaises with all sectors of the industry, from major utility companies to environmental and regulatory bodies. Utilising latest technology, Metasphere delivers intelligent, innovative all-in-one telemetry solutions for full network visibility, performance and forecasting. Reducing telemetry ownership cost for customers and aiding in time-critical remote asset and system management. For more information contact info@metasphere.net.au or phone +61 2 9956 7407.
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