Options for Remote Monitoring and Control of Small Drinking Water Facilities

Book excerpt: This book provides information to select, design, and implement remote telemetry supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems for use with various water treatment systems. The book also contains information on the sensitivity and reliability of various techniques for remote monitoring and control as well as transmittance and receiving of electronic information. The book will be especially valuable to those responsible for the approximately 190,000 small drinking water treatment systems throughout the United States. Communities being served by small treatment systems often do not have the resources to support qualified operators for their systems. Options outlined in the book for remote monitoring and control provide a mechanism for individuals to understand, select, design, and evaluate emerging technologies in water quality monitoring, process control, data acquisition, and data transmitting/receiving. Implementing selected options could significantly reduce the cost of operating a treatment system, thereby bringing safe drinking water within reach of small communities. In addition to the in-depth discussion of water quality and remote monitoring technologies, the book includes information on water quality regulations and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) devices for water quality monitoring, process control, data acquisition, and data transmitting/receiving.