Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Indian cities are organically formed and, being traditionally developed, they lack the capacity to intake the rapidly growing population. According to India’s Ministry of Urban Development, 60% of India’s population will live in cities by 2050. This calls for intelligent and smart infrastructure systems which can take care of the growing population influx while judiciously and effectively optimising the resources. With the growing population, water demand has increased multifold while supply is decreasing. These traditional cities now need uninterrupted supply to cater such huge population and at the same time saving water. This paper proposes solutions for traditional cities to smartly cater the demand while being sustainable. In such urban areas, it is challenging to provide 24*7 water supply system because 38% of the water that is pumped through the distribution grid, accounts for transmission loss, so it is very important to take measures to secure water through efficient water management systems. The study reveals that using intelligent and smart systems of water management for a small city having 1.5L population can save huge costs as well as water. Smart water management system after implementation gives appealing results. While the coverage of service now increased from 80% to 100%, the non-revenue water decreases to 5% from 38%. Hours of water supply goes up from 2 hours to 24 hours and 100% of the households get a metered connection. Operation and maintenance cost decreased by 60% and revenue collection increases by 40%, thus saving 25% more water than before.