Research on the Application of Internet of Things Technology in Water Operation and Management of Mountainous Counties——A Case Study of Wencheng Water Affairs

Abstract

Water supply in mountainous counties of southern Zhejiang is featured by scattered water sources, complex pipe network terrain, difficult operation and maintenance, and weak leakage control. The traditional manual operation and maintenance mode suffers from low efficiency, high cost and delayed safety management, which cannot meet the requirements of modern water operation management. Based on the operational practice of Wenzhou Public Utilities Development Group Wencheng Water Co., Ltd., this paper constructs a four-level smart water framework of “perception layer-transmission layer-platform layer-application layer” by adopting the Internet of Things (IoT) engineering technology system. Low-power IoT, edge computing and big data analysis technologies are deeply integrated into core businesses including water quality monitoring, pipe network leakage control, pump station energy consumption management and intelligent meter reading. In view of the shortcomings of mountainous water affairs such as weak communication conditions, difficult equipment operation and maintenance, and data islands, this paper proposes a lightweight and low-cost implementation optimization scheme. The practical results show that the application of IoT technology effectively reduces pipe network leakage rate and operational maintenance costs, realizes active early warning of water supply safety and digital upgrading of operation management, and significantly improves the refined operation level of water affairs in mountainous counties, which can provide a reference for the digital transformation of water affairs in similar mountainous areas.