Meath County Council looks to EMR to monitor water networks

EMR Integrated Solutions today announced a €250,000 contract win with Meath County Council to provide real-time monitoring of the county’s wastewater facilities. The primary objective of the project is to improve operational efficiency and reduce response times to plant failures.

The initial system comprises a web-connected SCADA server linked via high power radio to the thirty main wastewater collection and treatment assets.

Commenting on the project, Fergus Duffy of Meath County Council said:

“EMR have demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of the requirements of our application and have delivered a feature rich radio-based SCADA solution. The system has greatly improved our ability to see what’s happening on our network and respond to incidents. The information gathered by the system has proven invaluable in reducing response times to incidents.”

To achieve the council’s objectives for the project, EMR installed a comprehensive UHF radio network and Motorola ACE3600 RTUs monitoring the performance of all key plants from a central web accessible SCADA server. Following initial deployment the network was extended to cover the water treatment and distribution assets and now includes over 100 sites operating over UHF radio.

In addition the system linked via GSM with over 200 metering points where flows and water quality data is collected at regular intervals across the entire distribution network. The system provides a comprehensive platform for the monitoring, control, reporting and analysis of all aspects of network performance.

Meath County Council administers a local authority area of over 2,342 km2 with a population of over 170,000 in the north east of Ireland. With a major growth in population, the need for efficient management of the water infrastructure is critical.