Towards a smart water city: A comprehensive review of applications, data requirements, and communication technologies for integrated management

Smart cities are an innovate concept for managing urban cities to enhance sustainability and increase quality of life for citizens. Although urban water infrastructure (UWI) performs important functions in a city (e.g., supply of drinking water), information and communication technologies (ICT) and system-wide management of networkbased UWI are not yet widely deployed. Therefore, this review summarises first both existing and potential applications related to network-based UWI, characterised by different spatial and temporal resolution of measurement and control data. Second, a comprehensive analysis of ICT is provided, which is extended with exemplary applications in the field. The analysis reveals that a coordination between intended application and usable communication technology is required to realise an efficient monitoring and control network in the field of UWI networks. To overcome this limitation, a detailed framework is developed, which can be used by researcher, network operators, and stakeholder to identify suitable communication technologies for different UWI applications or to determine possible applications for an existing ICT system. Following, the applicability of the framework is demonstrated by selected examples. As the framework also indicates, an integrated approach towards smart water cities requires the combination of different communication technologies to satisfy all specifications.

Automated summary

Smart cities aim to improve urban sustainability and enhance quality of life for residents. However, the network-based management of urban water infrastructure (UWI) and the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT) still face challenges in achieving efficient monitoring and control networks, requiring coordination of different communication technologies for optimal functionality.