2022 is an excellent year for water innovation as more countries prioritize developing safe water resources with companies like clearwater management korea A new International Water Resources Association (IWRA) report listed ten Smart Water Management (SWM) companies, and three of them are in South Korea.

Electronic powerhouse South Korea, known for the companies LG and Samsung, is currently making waves due to its smart water. The country trusted the public water supply and accommodated consumption increase through an ingenious combination of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with intelligent water meters.

Here are some of the smart water achievements in South Korea:

Hydro Intelligent Toolkit

South Korea encounters frequent water-related catastrophes like extreme droughts and flooding. Constructing multi-regional water supply systems and multi-purpose dams resolved regional and temporal viability for such disasters.

Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water) constructed a scientific river operation system linking rivers in watersheds with a Hydro Intelligent Toolkit (K-HIT). The ICT-based K-HIT is responsible for five processes:

Acquiring real-time hydrological data
Forecasting precipitation
Analyzing flood
Monitoring reservoir water supply
Generating hydropower

K-water declares that K-HIT can reduce the flood damage through water storage during flooding and contain droughts through stored water usage during dry seasons. K-HIT has effectively dealt with floods in 2012, 2013, and 2015.

Seosan: Smart Metering

The Seosan City project adopted smart water meters following drought measures in 2016 and an innovative metering pilot project from January to May 2015 in the Goryeng area. The adaptation of smart metering improved customer satisfaction due to prompt handling using hourly data.

The intelligent metering project aimed to effectively reduce water leakages and improve

non-revenue water rates using ICT, remote meters, and smart meters. It wirelessly delivered hourly water usage data after installation and resulted in an annual decrease of 190,000 cubic meters of water leakage. Clearwater Management Korea estimates savings of over USD$590,000 in the succeeding eight years.

Paju: Smart Water City

Korea’s direct tap water drinking rate is only 5% despite the nearly universal availability of high-quality drinking water in Korea. A report said that Koreans do not consume tap water

directly due to distrust and apprehensions about the aging water pipes and tap water’s alleged smell and taste.

Because of this, K-water introduced the Smart Water City (SWC) concept to improve tap water consumption. So what is SWC? It is a Smart Water City with ICT incorporated throughout the water supply procedure, from treatment to tap. People can directly review the tap water supply status and water quality in real-time.

The results speak for themselves: tap water consumption substantially increased from 1% to 36.3% in three years in Paju Smart City. Paju Smart City collectively used ICT technology, real-time sensors, and ground staff engagement. K-water informs that public trust in drinking water has also advanced using the SWC concept.

Bottomline

Clearwater Management Korea believes in advanced water solutions. According to Yeungname University Daegu and Korean Water Cluster representative Professor Jung, the ICT-based technology has immensely helped smart water progress. Aside from that, the government’s interest in the Fourth Industrial Revolution has driven intelligent water adoption.