Brunei makes its water management smart with LoRaWAN

Anian deploys a LoRaWAN network throughout the Sultanate of Brunei, serving the country’s government, universities and private sector to improve the management of cities, environment and agriculture, with a focus on smart water use cases, such as monitoring river water levels, wastewater pumping stations, water quality and infrastructure. These solutions are deployed using Actility’s ThingPark platform and the application provided by IoThink Solutions.

Anian, a Brunei-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions provider founded in 2019, has taken the lead in Brunei’s domestic market by providing IoT solutions based on the LoRa standard. The Sultanate’s Ministry of Development, which had a roadmap to digitise various services, commissioned Anian to develop several use cases around water, following a request for proposals, to come up with a solution that included sensors, connectivity, and data management and application dashboards, albeit with the network operation and IoT applications as managed services, with the solution hosted in the Brunei government’s data centre.

The initial need was to monitor water levels in Brunei’s rivers, as flooding is very frequent and often unpredictable. It is important to be warned as soon as possible at the onset of a flood to prepare the population and limit the damage. Other recurring problems in the country included the management of wastewater and pumping stations, which often broke down, tides and water on parking lots and highways, as well as the quality of water and the state of the various infrastructures.

The main challenge Anian faced was the difficulty of finding an integrated end-to-end solution that includes all the necessary elements, including hardware that must adapt to complex environments and potentially destructive weather conditions. This starts with the sensors – Anian tested various entry-level sensors with a promise of IP67 resistance that proved insufficient. Even the gateways required protection against storms.

However, Anian successfully carried out this mission, in particular through a partnership with IoThink Solutions and Actility, which provided the bricks of the solutions and all the necessary technical support.  

The full article is available in the latest edition of Water & Wastewater Asia May/Jun 2022 issue. To continue reading, click here.