SENSOR NETWORKS FOR MONITORING WATER SUPPLY AND SEWER SYSTEMS: LESSONS FROM BOSTON Ivan Stoianov 1 , Lama Nachman 2 , Andrew Whittle 3 , Sam Madden 4 , Ralph Kling 5 1 Research Associate, Imperial College London, UK, ivan.stoianov@imperial.ac.uk 2 Senior Research Scientist, Sensor Network Operations, Intel Research, Santa Clara, CA, USA 3 Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA 4 Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA 5 Director, Sensor Network Operations, Intel Research, Santa Clara, CA, USA Abstract Recent developments in wireless sensor networks (WSN) promise to have significant impact on a broad range of applications relating to environmental monitoring, structural health monitoring, security and water safety. The convergence of the Internet, telecommunications, and novel information technologies with techniques for miniaturisation now provides vast opportunities for the application of low-cost monitoring solutions which could drastically increase the spatial and temporal resolution of environmental data. The paper describes the development of a prototype monitoring system which bridges advances in wireless sensor networks with advances in hydraulic and water quality modeling. The prototype monitoring system was deployed at Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) in December 2004, and it has been successfully collecting and charting near-real time hydraulic and water quality data as well as water levels in combined sewer outflows (CSO). The remote monitoring system has unique functionalities in terms of sampling rates (up to 1000 S/s), time synchronization (up to 1 ms) and in-network processing. These features create novel opportunities for wirelessly collecting data for applications such as hydraulic pressure transients, remote acoustic leak detection together with low-duty cycle applications such as monitoring water quality parameters and water levels in CSOs. The trial with BWSC has been tremendously useful to prototype hardware and software tools, and to identify deployment and operational challenges in using sensor networks for monitoring and management of large scale water supply systems. Keywords Industrial application of sensor networks, Water supply systems, Real-time monitoring and embedded systems 1. INTRODUCTION Monitoring large scale urban infrastructure such as water supply and sewer networks for detecting leaks, changes in water quality and preventing water contamination caused by sewer overflows has the potential to save municipalities millions of dollars a year and bring significant social benefits by reducing public health hazards. In the US alone, there are approximately 160,000 public drinking water systems that comprise around 700,000 miles of water distribution mains (EPA 2005b). A recent study carried out by the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that community water systems need $277 billion over the next 20 years (2003-2023) to install, upgrade, and replace infrastructure (EPA 2005a). Transmission and distribution projects represent the largest category of this estimate with $184 billion in needs. The problems of aging and failing infrastructure have been further exacerbated with the threat of contaminant