Water and the internet of things

Over the past year on this blog I have been talking about a number of concepts around how we can become smarter about how the world uses water. I thought it would be good for this posting to take a breath and put it all together to give new and existing readers an overview of where the IBM Intelligent Water Platform (IOW) is now and its technical capabilities.

At the heart of IBM Intelligent Water Platform (IOW) is the water information hub (WIH) which provides a system view of the internet of things as related to a water or grid utilities network. This network is built up from elemental data sources such as sensors, meters, enterprise asset management systems, CRM systems, ERP systems and GIS systems. This systems view allows the user to view the water network as a whole, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The water information hub is modeled using a flexible semantic technology that allows the modeling of real world water networks and can manage change dynamically. 

Smarter water enterprise applications can then be build on-top of the water information hub using a software development kit (SDK). The SDK provides a number of core services for the application developer:

• A interface into the water information hub (WIH), 
• A interface into the advanced analytics engines of the platform, 
• A rendering service that allow the application developer to display result to the end user

Using these core interfaces, the platforms eventing model, and an integration with social media services an application developer can develop advanced analytical water application such as pressure management and pump energy optimization and deploy these applications into the IOW platform.

The enterprise application development pattern separates function from content using the concept of a content pack. in a model, view controller pattern. This allows an application developer and business partner to collaborate together to solve a diverse range of global water problems. In the Smarter Water SDK, the application’s content comes in the form of a content pack. We can think of a content pack as a container that holds lots of different types of content, content that can be both consumed and produced by the application, such as KPI, SOPs, and custom reports.

An organizing principle is then used to categorize and classify the applications. This classification is by vertical (e.g. Water sourcing and distribution, waste water, etc), by role (executive, planner, operator) and by business responsibility. This classification allows for multiple application to be installed and configured, as part of the application development lifecycle, into the IOW platform.

All of the services of the IOW SDK interfaces are built and offered as cloud services to allow for remote development and deployment of enterprise applications. All of the enterprise analytical applications can in turn expose and be offered as business services. These applications can then collaborate and cooperate together using their business services to help solve real world water problems such as a leaking pipe.