City of Ottawa unveils "Connected Water" quality testing pilot, with Rogers and Ericsson

The City of Ottawa’s Innovation Pilot Program has unveiled its “Connected Water” monitoring solution, which supports an early detection system for water quality testing, developed in collaboration with Ericsson and Rogers Communications.
The system leverages a combination of Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and LTE mobile broadband technologies to gather real-time data that Ottawa city staff can use to predict, prevent and respond to potential water quality issues, including cleanliness and abnormal temperatures.
Ottawa’s current water monitoring program, which includes approximately 80,000 annual water quality tests in a network of rivers and streams roughly spanning 4,500 kilometres, will work complementary to the Connected Water solution, which the city describes as a “first of its kind in Canada”, with sensors collecting data every 30 minutes.
“Having the ability to conduct real-time monitoring of key water quality indicators has the potential to advance the way we manage this natural resource” said Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson. “We’re thrilled to participate in this pilot with Ericsson and Rogers, and are hopeful the results will validate how Internet of Things technology can reinforce our current municipal water testing processes.”
The Rideau Valley, South Nation and Mississippi Valley Conservation Authorities are also participating in the pilot, along with the City of Ottawa.
“Hundreds of cities across Canada today rely on manual processes to maintain and deliver utilities. Internet of Things solutions can help municipalities like the City of Ottawa save time and resources while improving the accuracy of their processes,” said Charlie Wade, SVP, Products and Solutions, Enterprise Business Unit, Rogers. “Our work with Ericsson and the City is part of our larger focus to help cities and communities across Canada implement products and solutions that will better connect their resources, infrastructure and people.”
Rogers’ IoT-as-a-Service program now comprises more than 1.7 million M2M and IoT connections, and covers food safety, farming and food monitoring, and level monitoring, or measuring levels in things like fuel tanks.
Ottawa’s water monitoring sensors are capable of collecting data over a widespread area of the City’s watershed system, to help City staff improve manual testing efficiencies.
The City of Ottawa’s program will leverage sensors to access data for real-time monitoring and identification of water quality issues,, allowing employees to use this data to provide feedback to Ericsson and Rogers regarding the performance of the Connected Water solution and validate the data generated against existing water testing protocols that are currently in use by the City.
“Programs similar to this pilot have proven to be extremely effective in remotely monitoring water quality, but they have typically been too expensive to be deployed extensively for a big city like Ottawa,” said Graham Osborne, President, Ericsson Canada. “We believe this Connected Water solution is a big step forward in providing government bodies with a cost-effective and efficient technology to monitor a natural resource as crucial as our local rivers and streams.”
Forty percent of the world’s mobile traffic is carried over Ericsson networks.
The company has approximately 115,000 professionals and customers in 180 countries, supporting networks that connect more than 2.5 billion subscribers.