50/Plumbing Engineer March 2019

T

he smart home concept is one most people are familiar with. Smart home gadgets and devices with the promise of making our lives easier while being energy efficient and more sustainable are flooding the domestic retail market and becoming a necessary innova- tion in our homes. Now expand that thought and imagine the smart home concept in a larger context - a smart city, the new frontier in sustainable technology. Many cities strive to be smart, such as Amsterdam, which has more than 170 collaborative projects running on an interconnected platform through wireless devices and others with only a small initiative focusing on one or two public services or amenities. But are these cities truly smart? Do even the most advanced of them manage to inte- grate all aspects of technology into the city's infrastructure at every level? Astonishingly, none of the smart city concepts have man- aged to integrate water and wastewater management and, in particular, water reuse into the smart city infrastructure. Most smart city concepts focus heavily on energy, commu- nications, transportation and local agriculture - with water infrastructure posing a unique challenge as yet without a proven solution. Most technology for successful water and wastewater management already exists but it lacks mean- ingful implementation within the smart city concept, which is vital on several levels. Our aging and costly sewer infrastructure is a challenge for all cities and the investment to redevelop and modernize is enormous, so where do we start? DEWATS (decentral- ized wastewater treatment systems) are now a recognized and accepted technology capable of treating both domestic and industrial wastewater close to point source. By collect- ing and treating used water in DEWATS and redistributing to local homes and industry, transporting water over long distances is no longer needed, significantly reducing water wastage and cost. Water-processing equipment represents one part of com- munication between all vital systems, but such communica- tions require standards that, while emerging, require critical expansion before successful smart city implementation is possible. While some basic standards exist for water, water reuse and wastewater, they are in dire need of development and

Smart Cities

and Water Reuse

By Dr. Markus Lenger

For smart cities to become a functioning reality, water treatment and reuse must be part of the equation.