Water Smart - Integrated water management
Client: Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
Location: Tasmania, Australia
Date: June 2006 – June 2011
Developing smarter data management solutions to drive enhanced water use efficiency and productivity
Background
Under the Water Management Act 1999, and as a signatory to the National Water Initiative, the State of Tasmania is committed to ensure that all major use of surface water and groundwater in the state is metered.
Manual recording, collection and processing of this data was extremely inefficient and impractical in terms of proactive management of the state’s water resources. This is due to the fact that water use data is only received annually (weekly during periods of restrictions) via a manual process, extremely low data compliance rates (at best 20% information retrieval rates) and the lack of resources required to collect and manually process the information.
Entura was engaged to develop a smarter solution to overcome these manual processes.
Solution
The project involved purchase and installation of approximately 3000 Ajenti Data Management System (ADMS) units and the associated data management requirements to be fitted to water meters throughout catchments where intensive water extraction occurs.
The project also provided for the associated data establishment and management requirements. The ADMS collects individual water meter data and transmits the data via 3G mobile telephony to a central database linked to a web server. This information is validated and available to local authorities and also to water licensees via their own personalised website.
Licensees can access their daily water use, total water use and water use against allocation, from their website.
Outcome
Implementation of the solution developed by Entura enabled the Tasmanian Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts to improve its proactive management of catchment water, and carry out accurate water use audits that will greatly assist with future planning.
In doing so, the client has been able to drive enhanced water use efficiency and productivity by licensees and enhanced environmental management due to improved seasonal water use data linked with catchment water management plans, environmental critical flow rates and management of water during periods of restrictions.
