Improving the operational efficiency of water desalination systems through the integration of GIS-SCADA

ABSTRACT

The overlap of different fields has made it easy to introduce a real development of new technologies. New techniques used in the water sector are introduced; the importance of integration with each other will be increased to work as one unit with more efficiency and effectiveness. Integrating the real-time control of a supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA) and the data management and analysis capabilities of a geographic information system (GIS) can assist operators and decision-makers in disaster response and better system control. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the potential use of SCADA in conjunction with GIS to control and manage a water desalination plant network. The aid of the developed integrated system in the management of a water desalination system can be accessed on an interactive single dashboard for the network to simulate real situations through the data collected at each site that can be provided in real-time by SCADA, in addition to the results of analysis of these data that help to take the right decision and deliver the instructions thereon directly to the field devices to deal with any case of emergencies. In addition, this paper introduces an implementation approach of a new category of decision-support tools based on the integration of GIS and SCADA in implemented water desalination plants at the National Water Research Center (NWRC). A general review of both systems including their potentials in water desalination systems and the possibility of integration with each other has been introduced. This study demonstrates how integrating GIS and SCADA into a single dashboard can aid in data acquisition and provide a better understanding of the communication between the various sites and systems’ facility administration, despite the fact that such integration is uncommon because both systems use different IT platforms.

KEYWORDS:

• GIS
• SCADA
• water desalination
• dashboard
• geodatabase

Abbreviations

GIS	=	Geographic Information System
SCADA	=	Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system
NWRC	=	National Water Research Center
GPS	=	Global Positioning System
H&H	=	Hydrological and Hydraulic modeling system
RO	=	Reverse Osmosis
RTUs	=	Remote Terminal Units
PLC	=	Programmable Logic Controller
IT	=	Information Technology

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

‘Due to the nature of the research, due to commercial supporting data is not available’.