As part of our special focus on water monitoring this month, we spoke to the team at US-based company KETOS to find out more about this critical sub-sector of the water industry.
Bringing water intelligence to customers across agriculture, industrial and municipal operations, KETOS combines software, hardware and predictive analytics to automate water monitoring and testing.
Why is water monitoring important?
Many countries around the world face high levels of arsenic, for example in drinking water supplies, or deal with other heavy metals such as cadmium or chromium. Water monitoring is necessary to provide access to real-time water quality data and to ensure safe and clean drinking water can be provided.
Additionally, water quality and conservation is critical for agricultural applications – particularly in instances where nutrient management, water availability, water quality and consistency, or product safety is essential.
Moreover, in industrial applications, water monitoring – particularly of effluent, produced and recycled water – is essential to a holistic water strategy so manufacturers are able to meet stringent safety, compliance, and sustainability standards.
What are some of the contemporary challenges impeding the provision of clean water globally?
Today, water contamination threatens community health, food production and safety, overall economic growth, and more.
Water scarcity impacts water quality. Over 898 trillion gallons of water are used annually by the top 10 water-consuming countries in the world, and by 2040, water demand is expected to increase by more than 50%. Of the total amount of water used, roughly 359 billion cubic meters is wastewater – produced each year across the globe.
How could the current approaches to water monitoring be improved?
Unfortunately, conventional monitoring is manual, time-consuming, and slow and it negatively impacts the efficiency of operations, yield, compliance, and treatment.
With the demand for quality water only increasing across agriculture, industrial, and municipal applications, the need for autonomous water quality monitoring – and easily accessible, real-time water quality data – becomes even more critical.
Software, hardware, and predictive analytics should be combined to automate water monitoring and testing. This will help eliminate once manual processes and enable water operators to fully automate water quality testing and monitoring.
How can emerging smart technologies like AI, IoT, and big data help?
The role that water plays in most industries including Agriculture, Industrial/Manufacturing, and Municipal is critical and the implementation of smart water strategies, incorporating Industrial IoT water quality sensors, can have profound results that positively impact fiscal, environmental, and social factors.
Ensuring that smart water strategies leverage IoT technology that is accurate, autonomous, interoperable, and affordable is the key to success. Whether looking for the most straightforward implementation of a single, new water quality parameter or considering large-scale replacement of instrumentation or manual lab sampling, it is essential to evaluate the entire process, not just the hardware itself.
What is your organisation doing?
KETOS delivers smarter, safer, and more sustainable water solutions to change the way the world thinks about water. This is done through a comprehensive offering of industrial-grade patented hardware, an IoT communication framework, and a robust software platform to address global water management issues.
Real-time monitoring and understanding of water, both quantitatively and qualitatively, helps address both water efficiency (leak-detection & usage) and water quality (safety), ultimately increasing water availability. With the power of actionable and predictive water intelligence on a global scale, KETOS seeks to solve a number of the world’s water challenges with the goal of preserving this quintessential resource for generations to come.
What are your hopes for the future?
With the power of actionable and predictive water intelligence on a global scale, KETOS seeks to solve the world’s water challenges with the goal of preserving this quintessential resource for years to come.
