A survey of water distribution system and new approach to intelligent water distribution system

This paper reviews the challenges in water distribution systems (WDS), development and deployment of intelligent systems to manage WDS efficiently. Recognizing that intelligent systems has the potential to revolutionize management of precious natural resource by utilities, this paper provides a summary of the research work and practices for researchers and industry practitioners to ensure that the technology cultivates sustainable drinking water management. At present a lot technological developments ensures reduction of labor cost for various tasks in WDS. The technical sophistications of intelligent systems to ensure optimal use of precious resources have increased noticeably in recent decades. This paper addresses all concerned issues with WDS such as real time data collection, forecast of future water consumption, labor cost, recovery cost of water treatment and distribution, power supply requirement, operational time, water leakage, remote capturing of meter reading etc. We proposed a new intelligent water distribution system, which overcomes most of the problems in WDS.

I. Introduction

Water is most precious natural resource. It is not only prime need of human beings but also a basic necessity of economic development. An almost 71 percent of the earth's surface is occupied by water. Out of this 71 percent only 3 percent of water is fresh water and 97 percent is sea water i.e. such a huge amount of water is non-drinkable. Out of this 3 percent fresh water, 2.5 percent water is frozen (locked up in Antarctica, the Arctic and glaciers) and not available for humans. Therefore humanity must rely on 0.5 percent fresh water available for all their needs.