Smart water management system for residential buildings in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

As the consumption of water is increasing in arid countries such as Saudi Arabia, water management becomes a big challenge for both the government and society. The challenge also includes supplying continuous water with good quality at minimum cost. In this paper, we introduce a smart water management system that can be used in buildings where continuous flow of water is not available; instead, water is stored in big tanks underground of the buildings. The proposed smart system regulates the water flow between the underground tanks and other tanks on the top of the buildings and controls the water level in these tanks using LoRa communication technology. If the system detects any shortage of water or fault in the system mechanism that affect the water flow, such as faulty valves or defective pump, it deactivates the corresponding part and send an emergency signal to the building’s manager. In the mean time, the system also measures certain important water quality elements continuously and sends warning messages to the building’s manager if the value of any of these measurements exceeds safe levels. The system was run for a long period of time, where all water quality parameters were recorded. The system stopped and sent an emergency signal when water pump was deliberately disconnected but went back to operation after the pump was connected again. The proposed system proved to be a very good solution to the existing mechanically controlled system that most buildings in Saudi Arabia have.

KEYWORDS:

• Water management
• flow rate
• smart system
• water quality
• sensors

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raghied M. Atta

Raghied M. Atta was born in Egypt in 1966. He received the BSc degree from Cairo University, Egypt, in Electrical Engineering in 1989. He obtained his MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University, UK, in 1994 and 1998, respectively, in Microelectronics Engineering. He then worked in different universities in the UK (Manchester, Southampton and Birmingham) before moving to Taibah University in Saudi Arabia, where he works as an Associate professor. Dr Atta had and still holds few projects in Microelectronics applications and renewable energy.