Efficient Water Distribution System Using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA): A Case Study of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation, Andhra Pradesh, India

As on today, the population of India is more than a thousand million. The urban population would be around 40% and rest will be semi urban and rural. This means a very large demand on the civic amenities including water supply for domestic purposes and in addition more water would be needed for purposes such as irrigation, industry, etc., which have to keep pace with the increasing demands of rising population. Therefore, identification of sources of water supply, their conservation and optimal utilization is of utmost importance. Even the present scale of water supply to urban and rural population is grossly inadequate and not all communities are provided with safe water supply, let alone piped water system; hardly any metropolitan city has a continuous water supply; and very few cities could boast of providing adequate water supply to meet their growing demands at adequate pressure. Many facts are involved in tackling the problem of providing protected water supply to all communities at the minimum cost and in the shortest possible time. Emphasis has to be laid on both the aspects of the system namely planning, management, technical and financial. At present a number of decisions, both at policy and technical levels, are being based on empirical considerations and divergent practices are in vogue in the country in so far as designing system itself is concerned. The planning and design of water supply network requires great attention these days because ineffective water distribution leads to various losses due to which the ultimate goals of water supply such as quality, quantity and timeliness are not being achieved so, the planning and design requires the expertise of city planners and civil engineers. Hence in the present study it is dealt with effective water distribution system which deals with the study of water supply, occurrence of water losses and its control. One of the methods through which the effective water distribution can be attained is SCADA. I refer to SUPERVISORY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION mainly aims at providing drinking water as per the Indian standards and reducing the water wastage during distribution, and thereby attaining controlled supervision on both quality and quantity of water. In this project we have dealt with the implementation of SCADA, the process involved in it and its achievement.