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Procedia Computer Science 107 (2017) 122 – 128

International Congress of Information and Communication Technology (ICICT 2017)

A New Framework on Regional Smart Water

Wang Yuanyuana,b*, Liu Pingb, Shi Wenzec, Yin Xinchunb,c
a
Resources and environment engineering institute, Yangzhou Polytechnic College, Yangzhou 225009,P R China
b
College of Information and Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225127, P R China
c
Guangling College , Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225009, P R China
* Corresponding author: 94668007@qq.com Tel.: +86 150-5252-6098.

Abstract

Smart water is the development trend of water information. After analysis of the current key issues of water information, such as
construction is not intensive, data resources need to be integrated, business collaboration is not enough, a new overall framework
of regional smart water is designed. From bottom to top, it can be divided into sensing layer, transport layer, processing layer,
application layer and unified portal layer. In order to share resources and data, the processing layer is further subdivided into the
virtual resource management layer, data center layer and service component library layer.

Keywords: Regional Smart Water; Overall Framework; Resource Sharing;

1. The concept and practice of smart water

Water is the source of human life. With the increase of population and urban development, the shortage of water
resources is becoming increasingly prominent. Water pollution is also becoming more and more serious. Because of
the serious influence caused by the flood, the drought and terrible weather all over the world, supervision and
management of the water resources become a big problem for urban development. As an important part of Smart
City1, smart water2 is expected to help human being by a new generation of information technology and
communication technology, which can solve several problems, like the global climate change, the shortage of water
resources due to people’s overuse, and the complicated water resources situation such as severe flood and drought
disaster, the deterioration of ecological environment3. It is also expected to improve the efficiency of water resources
and promote the construction of water-saving society. Thus, promoting the water conservancy modernization with
the water conservancy informationization.
Smart water is also called Smart Water Grid (SWG4), Internet of Water5, Smart Water Management and etc.
Some of these definitions focus on the smart water target4, some highlight the application of information technology

1877-0509 © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 7th International Congress of Information and Communication Technology
doi:10.1016/j.procs.2017.03.067
 Wang Yuanyuan et al. / Procedia Computer Science 107 (2017) 122 – 128 123

tools5, and also some emphasize on mechanism innovation, resource integration and business collaboration from the
view of practice6. Literature[7] has extracted the characteristics of the smart water with 7 "more", which can
embody the concept of smart water.
Countries around the world have invested a lot of money in smart water construction. According to their own
conditions, they implement it in stages with scientific and technological means and focus on different parts of it8. In
the United States, IBM has built a comprehensive real-time sensing network and a real-time online monitoring
system for the Hudson River4; In Brazil, IBM has established a three-dimensional prediction model which is based
on geographic information system. It can effectively evaluate the utilization efficiency of water resources and land
development4. In the Netherlands, IBM has worked on a project of monitoring the condition of flood inundation,
which changed moment by moment, furthermore, they constructed smart levees that would respond accordingly on a
real-time basis4. The SEQ smart water network in Australian9 and the recycling water project in Singaporean9 are
two successful models of smart water construction project. Many cities in China have also developed the
construction of smart water. Take Wuxi10, Shenzhen10, Shanghai6 for example, according to the status of their water
conservancy informationization and the most urgent water problem, they made full use of information technology,
broke through the traditional concept, updated system, improved infrastructure, standardized service, embodied the
intelligence, attention sharing and collaboration, and then provided a model of smart water construction.
However, there are still a lot of problems in the process of transformation from water conservancy
informationization to smart.
First, both the concept and implement of the smart water have different expressions, and different strategies. The
smart water concept definition is not uniformed or clear, and its structure has no unified standard.
Second, although the information automatic monitoring has already been implemented in the aspects of
hydrology, rainfall, disaster, water resources development, production management, project construction and so on,
the information collection cannot fully meet the needs of water management. The monitoring site layout, layout
density and the timeliness of data acquisition, normative and reliability need to be further optimized.
Third, due to the lack of top-level design, construction of water conservancy informationization has many more
subjects and different sources of investment, the degree of coordination in construction projects is insufficient, and
the intensive degree of informationization construction is not high. Thus in some degree causing infrastructure
duplication of investment, information separatism and waste of resources, lack of unified management mechanism
of information resources.
Fourth, at present most of the water conservancy informationization application is still in the information release
stage, information among applications lack regulate circulation, inter departmental coordination is not enough, the
development and utilization level of information resources is not high, lack of effective analysis and processing of
data, business decision support ability is not strong enough.
Therefore, to define smart water and design its overall framework are two basic tasks for the smart water.
We consider that smart water should have the following 3 characteristics:

x Comprehensive and detailed data collection:

Smart water can achieve a more thorough perception and obtain more comprehensive and complete information
through the technology of Internet-of-things. Meanwhile, relying on the perfect control system, smart water can
control the bottom intelligent terminal more accurately and automatically.

x Intelligent and real-time data processing:

By taking full advantage of cloud computing, data analysis, data mining, three nets fusion technology, the smart
water system can integrate the existing isolated data, mine the newly collected data deeply, thus enhancing the
efficiency and effectiveness of water management, and making more scientific decision and more timely reaction.

x Specification and coordination of business applications:

Smart water is a system which realizes the whole process of management of the water cycle. This covers all
aspects of water-involved affairs, including drainage, flood and drought control, water resources management, rural
water conservancy and other wading things. Besides, the service standards of each business department are strict,
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the management process is standard, the sharing of resources and business collaboration among various departments
have been well achieved.
According to different construction objects, smart water has different forms, such as smart water basin, smart
irrigation, city smart water and etc. This paper studies Regional smart water.

2. Overall framework of regional smart water

According to the characteristics of smart water, we put forward the overall framwork of the regional smart water
based on the Internet of Things and cloud computing, which is shown in Fig. 1. From bottom to top, it can be
divided into 5 layers: the perception layer, transport layer, processing layer, application layer and the unified portal
layer. Smart water construction is a systematic project and need guarantee of standard specification made by water
management department and information security. Meanwhile, smart water is an open platform, it has data
interconnection and business transfer with other companies excluding water sector, such as meteorological
department, environmental protection department and the hydrological departments.
Unified portal Layer
Standard Related
Information Application layer
external
specification Processing layer
security cooperation
Transport layer
units
Perception layer

Fig. 1. The overall framwork of regional smart water

2.1. Perception layer

Perception layer builds intelligent sensing system by arranging a large number of sensor nodes in the region, and
using remote sensing, satellite, Internet of Things technology. Thus, it can perceive the object's state, parameter and
position of the regional water affairs, and carry out the multidimensional sensing and data acquisition in real time
and comprehensively. As shown in Fig. 2, the perception of the perception layer covers the water resources, water
environment, water security and regional marine monitoring, almost the whole area of the overall perception system.

Perception layer
Water safety Water resources
monitoring monitoring

Water environment Marine

monitoring monitoring

Fig. 2. Perception layer composition data

In the perception layer, the purpose of regional smart water is comprehensive and thorough perception. Based on
the model of water dynamics, the sensing nodes are optimized and deployed. If both the Compressive Sensing
technology11 and data fusion technology12 are applied to the perception model, it can optimize the perception of the
network from the two dimensions of time and space. It is expected to save the node storage space, reduce the data
transmission quantity, save energy cost effectively, save construction costs, prolong the life of the network, and
increase the network coverage.
 Wang Yuanyuan et al. / Procedia Computer Science 107 (2017) 122 – 128 125

2.2. Transport layer

The task of the transport layer is to transfer the massive heterogeneous water data obtained by the sensing layer to
the data center, before transmission, the data usually need to be preprocessed, such as compression, encryption, etc.
The purpose of the transport layer is the fast, safe and stable interconnection. Take the cost of construction into
account, the regional smart water transport layer usually can use the public network, or virtual private network.

2.3. Processing layer

Processing layer is the core layer of the entire smart water. Its main tasks are resource sharing, unified standards,
data mining and analysis. Scientific decision-making, accurate prediction and early warning will be achieved
through sufficient data sharing, use and mining. The processing layer is further subdivided into 3 layers: virtual
resource management, data center and service component library, as shown in Fig. 3.

This is a typical cloud computing architecture. Cloud computing related technologies and methods are fully
applicable to the construction of the cloud platform of the regional smart water. Take information security into
account, some of the core data shouldn’t be open to the public. If the public cloud is used, the system must have its
own strict information security measures. Another method is to set up virtual cloud by using public cloud
architecture with virtual technology. If the conditions permit, a special private cloud for smart water can be built by
utilizing the existing hardware, software, data, network and other resources in each business company.
Service component library Unified data interface

Data center Source data Unified data model Unified database

Virtual resource
Computing Storage Network Safety management Other
management
resource resource resource resources resources

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the processing layer

2.3.1. Virtual resource management layer

We virtualize hardware resources such as servers, storage devices and network equipment, with distributed
technology and virtualization technology. If it is a public cloud or virtual private cloud, virtual resource management
will be provided by the cloud service provider. While constructing a private cloud, the virtual resource management
layer is responsible for shielding the business units of heterogeneous hardware, software, data and cyber source.
Smart water formed a unified resource pool, including computing, storage, network, security management and other
types of information infrastructure. The unified automatic management takes the virtual machine as the unit,
including monitor, scheduling, security.

2.3.2. Data centers layer

Smart decision-making is the core feature of smart water. The smart decision-making needs data analysis and
data mining. Effective data analysis depends on data sharing. In order to realize water data resources’ sharing,
Ministry of Water Resources Information Center developed the "Water Resources Information Resource Integration
and Sharing top design"13, many units have carried out the work about resource integration and sharing14.

Cai Yang15, Cheng Yilian16 have proposed a good information resource integration and data sharing program.
Data center layer in this article basically followed this line of thought for the construction of the database. The
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difference is that, in order to make "smart decisions", we increased a service component library in the third layer of
processing layer, which efficiently supports the function sharing on application system-level.
Data center is the core part of the integration and sharing of water resources. Its data conversion process is
shown in Fig. 4. There are three types of data from the virtual resource layer: spatial data, attribute data and
multimedia data. First, a unified data model is established after convergent data integration, data reorganization and
error correction. Then a unified database is established through data mining and analysis. Thus the classification of
data sharing is realized.

Source data Unified data model Unified database

Resource categories
Spatial data multidimensional Multidimensional
model theme application
library

Attribute data
Metadata model Metadata Shared libraries
database of Applications

Multimedia data
Entity object model The basic database

Fig. 4. Data conversion of data center

The basic database is built according to the water entity object model. It mainly covers the water data used to
identify the individual objects and the relationship between the water object. Then combined with the water
metadata model, the basic database is extracted step by step to form the metadata database. Business data shared
with other departments will be put into the shared libraries of application through the way of data service. Finally,
from the perspective of smart water, the data in the basic database of water affairs, the meta database and the shared
database will be reorganized. By using the data warehouse technology and the multidimensional classification
model, a multidimensional theme application database is formed.

2.3.3. Service component library layer

Service component library layer gains a variety of processing data from the data center. Then through data
mining or data analysis from the view of application, it can accurately judge the status and trend of water affairs.
Service component library can provide accurate data and reliable analysis for Water Affairs Bureau's macro decision
by warning water affair risk, analysis of the situation, the emergency response and so on. Meanwhile, it can provide
some services, such as data integration and data analysis, assistant decision and so on. By using these services, we
can get a variety of function libraries of application services, and then realize sharing in application level.
As shown in Fig. 5, service component library is the foundation of application layer construction. Component
libraries should contain a broad range of standardized and reusable middleware, interfaces, business modules, and
service components, as well as an automated tool for the combination and configuration of these content.
 Wang Yuanyuan et al. / Procedia Computer Science 107 (2017) 122 – 128 127

Service component library

Content Data service GIS service Data statistics Data analysis Unified
management data
interface
Indicator Report service Data mining Workflow engine Other
system

Fig. 5. Service component library content

The cloud computing technology is adopted in the processing layer. By using this technology, we can expand
regional smart water’s storage resources, computing resources and software resources, and thus its computing speed
could be faster and its reaction more timely. In order to keep the principle that a data is provided through only one
source, we combine the data resources, build a unified data model, and then a unified database, thus raise data
sharing degree. Service component library will be used to extract the shared module from the applications, so
business process has been standardized, which can ensure that the business transfer between different departments
be more collaborative.

2.4. The application layer

Application layer is mainly user oriented. As shown in Fig. 6, the service object is emphasized. Water resources
related business departments and enterprises are responsible for water resources management, water ecology
management, water environment management, flood control and drought relief work by using decision support
system provided by smart business support platform, and these management measures will directly or indirectly
affect people’s life or government decision-making. People receive customized information from the intelligence
service platform through the network, smart mobiles and other terminals, meanwhile, complete the payment and
other services related to the water affairs. By using smart government management platform, the relevant
government departments and enterprises can be timely response to public needs and demands, ensure the normal
operation of the smart water system through a series of initiatives of public affairs, administrative approval,
inspection and supervision etc.
Application layer

Smart public services Smart government management

Payment service Smart water meter Administrative approval Decision support

Convenience services Government affairs publicity

Travel service others Inspection and supervision others

Smart
Flood control and Water Water Water
business
drought relief resources environment ecology others
support
decision making management management management

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of application layer

2.5. Security system

In the process of regional smart water construction, we should always pay attention to the Standard Specification
for security and information security.
128 Wang Yuanyuan et al. / Procedia Computer Science 107 (2017) 122 – 128

Standard specification means to provide technology, management and service standards and specifications for the
regional smart water, such as: data dictionary, data flow, workflow, service standards, technical standards, etc.
For the security of cloud computing and Internet of Things, there are many ways and solutions of cryptography.
Many can be applied to the smart water system. But we should note that, because the smart water system is a
number of logical sub layer in the integration of large systems, many security issues are from system integration.
The existing security solutions for the perception of network, transmission network, cloud computing, secure multi-
party computation in the smart water environment may no longer applicable. We need to start from the top of the
system to build a security architecture, and provide information security of each logic layer in this architecture.

3. Summary

The construction of smart water is a systematic, long-term process. This paper presents an overall architecture of
regional smart water which based on the "Internet of Things plus cloud computing", and analyzes the key issues that
should be resolved for each layer. It is helpful to promote the construction of smart water.
Fund Project: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (N0. 61472343)

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