India’s huge population makes it very vulnerable when it comes to water shortage and scarcity. Based on reports published in 2017, approximately 330 million people in the country now suffer from regular water shortage issues.
Droughts causes the number of people suffering to rise dramatically. In 2016, for example, 300 districts spread across 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Madhya Pradesh experienced an acute shortage in the supply of drinking water.
India’s economy is largely dependent on its agriculture, and water shortages not only affect families and communities, but can have a disastrous effect on the economy.
One study suggests that by 2040 there will be no drinking water in almost all of India. By far the greatest waste occurs in electricity producing power plants, which require great amounts of water to cool them down. Between 2030 and 2040, many parts of the world will face clean water scarcity and given the population and growth of India’s largest cities, India could be one of the countries hit the hardest – unless something is done now.
Despite having over 18 percent of the world’s population, India has only 4 percent of the total available water resources, but with proper water management, the country can address this challenge before it is too late.
SenRa and McWane have announced they have come together to create a smart water solution, integrating SenRa’s network services and McWane’s sensor-based products together.
SenRa, a contributing member of the LoRa Alliance, is a PAN India Low Power Wide Area Network Provider (LPWAN), specifically using LoRaWAN for Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) solutions and applications.
SenRa has been rolling out several cities each month across the country for projects which require secure, reliable, long-distance communication at a low cost.
McWane produces water delivery products including meters which are now enabling advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technologies across India.
SenRa will be supporting McWane’s smart water meter projects across India with an initial deployment of 25,000 meters starting next month and a planned target of 200,000 over the next few years.
“India’s IoT movement has now shifted from proof of concepts and trials to large scale commercial deployments,” says Ali Hosseini, CEO of SenRa. “We are so excited to be supporting the deployment of the largest LoRaWAN smart water metering project in India to date. This is just the beginning of a much larger deployment strategy which this partnership has planned. We could not be any happier with this partnership and are excited about the positive impact smart technologies such as LoRaWAN will have on the overall state of India’s water crisis.”
SenRa’s commercial-grade network will power McWane’s Aquamesh IoT-enabled products & solutions to resolve the critical water issues faced by cities across India as the deployments grow.
“McWane is looking for LoRaWAN solutions from SenRa not only on the Water Metering Industry but also for Smart Control Valve and other Water Management solutions that need to be monitored remotely,” said Prakash Jonnalagadda, CEO of McWane. “McWane India has plans to take the IoT enabled Smart Water Management solutions to other Asian markets in the next 5 years.”
Juhi Fadia is an engineer, analyst, researcher and writer covering advanced and emerging technologies.Edited by
Ken Briodagh
