Developing a cyber-physical system for smart and sustainable drinking water infrastructure management

Frequent adjustment of operating strategies in water treatment plant and water distribution network as a simultaneous response to growing water scarcity has been a grand challenge. This challenge is emanated from transitioning the sporadic water quality samplings to self-awareness, self-adaptive, and fast response system. To bridge this gap, a cyber-physical system (CPS) is developed in this study to respond to the needs of smart and sustainable drinking water infrastructure management. This new CPS is able to gather the massive volumes of information from ground and aquatic reference data via advanced remote sensing and sensor network technologies to timely detect water pollution, exchange information through cyber interfaces, provide early-warning awareness with the aid of different models, and support actionable intelligence. Integrated 5-level CPS architecture is proposed in this study as an instruction of developing CPS for smart and sustainable drinking water infrastructure management.