Citycare's IoT story

 Using IoT to provide real-time information on critical business functions.

Citycare Water is New Zealand’s largest and most trusted water provider, maintaining over 40,000kms of piping at 1000’s of community reservoir tanks across the country.

When you want clean, safe and healthy drinking water 24/7, you need to know the status of your reservoir access hatches and water levels. You can drive 100’s of kilometers to inspect these in person, but a Spark IoT solution is simpler, faster and more cost efficient.

Customer problem

In water networks, water reservoir hatches are one of the highest risk points for contaminants to enter. The existing solution for monitoring and maintaining these hatches was a network of staff and reservoir owners.

This approach however, still meant that Citycare Water was unable to confirm if the right people were there, following safety regulations, and how much water remained.

IoT solution

Citycare Water engaged and worked closely with Spark IoT and IoT Partner Tussock Innovation to implement a monitoring system that enabled Citycare Water to see the status of their reservoir at any time, 24/7.

These remote sites presented a unique problem of having little or no power, which was overcome with the IoT solution.

Results

Three important results were achieved with the IoT solution. The first was the increased assurance that water quality would be maintained by knowing if any reservoir hatch was open.

The second was the ability to see how much water was left in each tank and the empty rate, with Citycares Water’s machine learning tools to identify leaks between groups of tanks and manage water quality knowledge.

The third was an initial saving of $50,000, that would scale to $100,000s over several years, as maintenance costs could be achieved at a much lower price.

"A journey that could have been 1000 miles took just one mile with Spark. Excellent support and buy-in”. Hugh Blake-Manson Sector Lead - Water Technology