AMR

AMR = Automatic Meter Reading for water supply network. "Automatic" means "Smart": a SIM card installed enables water consumption data to be streamed live to the internet cloud from where either a control room or any apps can access the data in real time. This would ensure detection of leakages, overflows and optimisation of water supply to all its 'districts'.

I had a meeting with a technical team of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (Bibhas Maity, Amitabha Pal, Amit Saha) to understand how smart meters can work in the Kolkata scenario, what works best in the  chaos of Calcutta streets. It seems they've made extensive trials and innovations. They said that it'd not work with ground water as it contains iron that clog and choke the sophisticated sensing mechanism. Now that in New Town surface water is a reality, we can, as per Mr Maity, very well think of AMR. Here no manual meter reading would be necessary. The system works best with a 24x7 water supply system as air bubbles from intermittent water flow tend to create tiny problems. I told him that the Smart City Plan of New Town has 24x7 water supply as one of its goals.

Next week, a technical team will come to New Town to discuss with New Town's water supply engineers and chalk out a road map of action. I have already decided to approach KMC officially to create a technical advisory group  for New Town Smart Water Supply programme.

A water meter with radio frequency module to transmit
data to internet cloud: shown by KMC engineers to me 

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Clippings:

ToI dt 14 Feb 2016

Khabar 365 dt 14 Feb 2016