# Towards Digitalization of Water Supply Systems for Sustainable Smart City Development--Water 4.0
## 4 Digital Technologies in the Water System: Key Drivers of Water 4.0
### Internet of Things  
The IoT has enjoyed a tremendous development in the industrial sector for revolutionizing the existing manufacturing systems and was regarded as a key technology for the next generation of manufacturing systems [27; 34; 56]. Most notably, IoT has aided smart factories [57]. This enables factory managers to automatically gather and analyze data in order to make better decisions and optimize production. The data from sensors and machines are communicated to the cloud by IoT connectivity solutions implemented at the factory level. It is possible to apply the same technology to water supply systems. At present, the operation of WSSs is controlled with the use of SCADA systems. In Water 4.0, IoT is anticipated to provide good transformative alternatives to improve the operation of many industrial technologies such as SCADA. IoT connects the internet and the smart water networks sensing devices and gathers useful data regarding the state of water distribution networks to assist in controlling, treating, and decision making. IoT through its smart sensors and devices provides real-time continuous monitoring capabilities to complex water piping networks. Leak flow, water flow, water level, and pressure along the distribution network can be monitored effectively in real-time with the help of IoT. Moreover, the provision of real-time monitoring of water quality along the complex distribution network could be achieved. This is one of the initiatives of smart water network management.  
Several countries have keyed into smart water network initiatives. For instance, Singapore, South Korea and Malta have regulatory policies where it has mandated the use of digital technologies to improve smart water grids and to reduce utilities' water loss to less than 12%. Recently, smart metering, which involves the deployment of automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced meter infrastructure (AMI), is another application of digital technology in the water sector. AMI networks are used for accurate metering and billing. These devices have the capacity to improve the accuracy of usage-based data for billing and also reduce cost from leaking pipes. Nowadays, several water utilities and  
Figure 6: Architectural framework for in-pipe water monitoring system [50].  
municipalities are investing in AMI. In South Africa, a MICROmega Group Company launched a utili_Meter_, which is an AMI-enabled water management device [58] coupled to a traditional water meter to provide a standard transfer specification-approved smart prepaid water metering solution. This technology allows rapid response to leaks and tampering, along with prepaid, post-paid, flat rate, and flow limitation water metering. In South Korea, Gochang Water Works implemented smart water meters in 24,000 households at the end of 2017. Examples of such smart water systems with AMR technology are LoRa AMR system water meters (see Figure 7). These can achieve water supply control through real-time communication and active data transmission. They adopt full package sealing technology to achieve Ip68 protection. The features of these meters are provided in Table 2[59]. In the middle of 2019, South East Water announced trials in partnership with industrial experts to develop and connect smart water meters and place acoustic sensors along underground pipelines using Vodafone's Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) [58]. Thus, the use of IoT in the water sector is increasingly gaining momentum.