Efficient pricing mechanisms are critical for optimizing water consumption, managing demand, and promoting equitable resource distribution. This paper presents a Time-of-Use (TOU) dynamic pricing model integrated with Blockchain Technology (BT) to address these challenges. The proposed model categorizes time into Peak, Off-Peak, and Shoulder hours, applying distinct pricing tiers responsive to demand fluctuations, further refined through seasonal adjustments and demand constraints to support sustainability and regulatory compliance. Implemented on the Polygon blockchain - chosen for its low transaction cost, high scalability, and ethereum compatibility - the framework leverages Smart Contracts (SC) for secure, transparent and automated real-time pricing adjustments. Full on-chain data storage eliminates off-chain dependencies, ensuring data integrity and traceability throughout the water supply chain. Pseudonymous blockchain identities maintain user privacy while providing full auditability via immutable on-chain records. Security vulnerabilities such as input manipulation, arithmetic overflows, and unauthorized access receive proactive mitigation through secure coding practices, role-based access control, and logic constraints. Performance evaluation using the k6 load testing tool under simulated real-world conditions shows robust system behavior: response times ranged from 2.14s to 5.64s, with the 90th and 95th percentiles at 3.5s and 4.26s, respectively. Latency ranged from 5.96ms (median) to 49.54ms (95th percentile), validating the system’s responsiveness, scalability, and reliability under concurrent user requests. The test results further highlight the system’s ability to handle concurrent user requests efficiently, demonstrating reliable performance under simulated varying workloads.
The water supply chain is vulnerable to risks such as unauthorized usage and identity impersonation. Traditional solutions lack transparency, tamper resistance, and scalability, making them unsuitable for multi-stakeholder environments. To address these challenges, our paper presents BEDLAM, a Blockchain-Enabled Dual-Layer Authentication Model framework, designed to secure water supply chain operations. The framework employs two complementary authentication layers, namely, (i) a blockchain-based identity management layer that provides verifiable stakeholder authentication while leveraging Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and (ii) a smart contract-based verification layer that regulates access control, service allocation, and transaction validation among multiple entities. The first layer of BEDLAM is implemented on the Mina Blockchain, via the Auro Wallet, and evaluated by using Tinkercad-based circuit simulations. The second layer is implemented using smart contracts to ensure user access control. Our proposed system ensures cryptographic data verification with finality, achieving a latency of 153 ms and generating tamper-proof records. Sensor data are processed on resource-constrained IoT devices, producing compliance proofs. Multiple simulations involving batch users demonstrate linear scalability (average proof time of 26 s per user, 0.038 transactions per second) and significant stability. The success rate of transactions is 99.3% with exponential back-off retries under 40% simulated packet loss.
Claire Cropper, Elizabeth Wulbrecht, Patrick Thomson, Aaron Dotson · 8 authors
Despite nationally reported metrics that suggest high levels of water security, approximately 12% of the United States of America (US) population is estimated to be water insecure based on the definition in United Nations (UN) SDG 6.1.1. Approximately half of these households are served by Decentralized Water Systems (DWS). In contrast, most research, engineering, innovation, and government programs are focused on Centralized Water Systems (CWS). In this perspective, we 1) characterize and define DWS using professional language common for CWS; 2) compare the social, economic, and regulatory responsibilities of stakeholders in each system; 3) outline existing strategies to professionalize this sector; and 4) propose research avenues to further professionalize DWS to ensure households served by these systems receive equitable water service. We demonstrate that while DWS share commonalities with CWS, decentralized systems are less formally structured; have more stakeholders between source and tap; and place much of the regulatory, finance, maintenance, and safety responsibilities on individual households. These responsibilities include ensuring water quantity and quality, selecting appropriate treatment technologies, finance of repairs and upgrades, and transporting water. We propose strategies for researchers to aid in codeveloping innovative DWS solutions, ensuring relevant integration and community-driven models that better support decentralized communities.
Muhammad Tayyab Naqash, Toqeer Ali Syed, Saad S. Alqahtani, Muhammad Shoaib Siddiqui · 6 authors
Sustainable urban water management is essential to handle water scarcity, leakage, and inefficient distribution. This paper covers water management in urban areas, including an introduction, an overview of water management practices, the characteristics and functioning of water distribution systems, monitoring and control systems for efficient distribution, smart systems for optimization, strategies for water conservation and waste management, per capita water demand analysis, and desalination plant overviews. The article proposes a blockchain-based water management architecture with IoT sensors for accurate reporting. The framework uses blockchain technology to authenticate and share real-time data between sensors and the water distribution dashboard. It also has a modular API for water leakage detection and flow control to decrease water waste and enhance distribution. The suggested approach might enhance water management; however, its execution is complex. Maintaining the framework’s efficacy is advised. The research provides insights into water management and proposes a technology solution employing blockchain and IoT sensors for trustworthy data reporting and effective water distribution to promote sustainable urban water management.
Water infrastructure occupies a central role in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially in water supply, sanitation and health, agricultural development, and energy production. However, Nigeria, and many Sub-Saharan African countries face specific challenges around infrastructure financing, systemic and repeated malfunctioning, and decentralized infrastructure types. This review provides insights into the current state of water infrastructure governance research in Nigeria and presents a research agenda.
Aaron Janzen, Achari Gopal, Irwin Samantha, Dore Mohammed
Many rural households do not have access to treated drinking water. However, some households may be in regions where a water treatment plant has excess capacity to supply some additional households. In such circumstances, small diameter low-pressure supply systems can be connected to major transmission lines to give these households access to water. These typically occur in locations that do not belong to recognized municipal or other local government. Such supply systems, commonly referred to as “trickle fill,” have been implemented in South America, Africa and Canada. This paper explains the concept of trickle fill supply systems. A user-friendly decision-making framework is proposed to assist the decision maker to determine whether the implementation of a trickle fill system is economically feasible for a given rural area. The decision-making assessment template (DMAT) takes into projects the economic, energy and carbon footprint changes. A case study for a rural municipality in the province of Alberta, Canada is presented to illustrate the value of the DMAT and the feasibility of trickle fill water supply as a solution. In this case study, a trickle fill water supply solution is found to be technically and economically viable and would reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint. It is shown that trickle fill solution can be implemented, resulting in an average cost of water to be $165 per month per household. This is higher than the affordability threshold of 2% of the median household income, but comparable to the cost that the end users currently pay for drinking water in the area. A capital grant from a higher level of government, or low interest rate financing, would reduce the end user costs to the level of the affordability criterion mentioned here. Hence, a trickle fill solution is worth investigating for some rural residents. Key words: Rural water systems; economic feasibility; carbon footprint, small diameter water distribution pipelines.
Sjon van Dijk, Amanda W. Lounsbury, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Ranran Wang
Many cities are confronted with both water scarcity and urban flooding as centralized water infrastructures becoming increasingly inadequate in a changing climate. Decentralized infrastructures like rainwater harvesting (RWH) can ease both issues. Yet, most studies find RWH offers limited infrastructure capacity at high cost. Previous assessments, however, fail to consider two critical advantages: multi-functionality and high adaptability. By improving the incorporation of these advantages in our analysis of 1.06 million buildings with distinct design and water demand characteristics and 20-year hourly precipitation records in New York City (NYC), we demonstrate, contrary to existing studies, that strategically designed, financed and implemented rooftop RWH systems in all or a subset of the buildings can meet large-scale infrastructure development needs for water supply and stormwater management. RWH implementation featuring public-private partnerships (PPP) in 43-96% of the buildings can serve 17-29% of the city's non-drinking water demands while reducing the public expenditure per unit of water supply by 13-85%. The distributed citywide RWH implementations prevent 35-56% of rooftop runoff from entering the sewage system, rivers, and/or waterways per month, with observed rooftop runoff reductions as high as 90% for a single rain event.
Madalina-Mihaela Buzau, Javier Tejedor-Aguilera, Pedro Cruz-Romero, Antonio Gómez‐Expósito
Non-technical losses (NTL) in electricity utilities are responsible for major revenue losses. In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end solution to self-learn the features for detecting anomalies and frauds in smart meters using a hybrid deep neural network. The network is fed with simple raw data, removing the need of handcrafted feature engineering. The proposed architecture consists of a long short-term memory network and a multi-layer perceptrons network. The first network analyses the raw daily energy consumption history whilst the second one integrates non-sequential data such as its contracted power or geographical information. The results show that the hybrid neural network significantly outperforms state-of-the-art classifiers as well as previous deep learning models used in NTL detection. The model has been trained and tested with real smart meter data of Endesa, the largest electricity utility in Spain.
Utilities have traditionally employed or contracted meter readers to collect natural gas usage data, which is expensive and time consuming, and thus necessitates the need of smart natural gas metering. Existing gas metering systems mainly focus on measuring the amount of gas flowing through an microelectro mechanical system (MEMS) thermal gas flow sensor and simply ignore the detailed gas composition. From computational fluid mechanics simulations, however, we discover that gases with different compositions will cause different effects on the reading of an MEMS sensor. Based on a thorough analysis of the working principle of MEMS thermal gas flow sensor, we propose an innovative mechanism to compensate the errors caused by different types of natural gases on the sensor's reading. The proposed solution first measures the physical property of metered gas to derive the composition correction coefficient that will then be used to correct the meter's reading errors, considering the relation between the calorific value and physical property of natural gases. In this way, the proposed solution realizes a real-time multicomposition gas metering via thermal gas flow sensors. We implement and evaluate the proposed gas metering technique in various Internet of Things systems, including industrial flow metering, gas metering in smart home, and gas metering in low-power wide-area networks. Experiment results verify the innovative design and confirm that the proposed solution features high sensitivity, high precision, and high range ratio.
In Albania there are plenty of natural water resources, a fraction of these reserves cover the need of population for fresh, clean drinking water. But this sector presents several critical problems related with water suppliers. It seems they have not completed the decentralization process; they depend on state subsidies to cover losses from uncollectible bills. Literature shows traditional forms of financing of water supplier in different economies (developed or not). One of the classic financial forms is to increase the rate paid bills. The water should be seen as product that has its own market and an equilibrium price. But do the citizens of Vlora city perceive in adequate way this concept? Should be an economical problem for them if the water tariffs increase or are they using alternative resources of drinking water? The article aims to give a descriptive overview of water industry and suppliers in Albania and especially empirically conclusions about of the situation in Vlora city, focusing on the perceptions of citizens. Are the accumulated financial losses of water supplier correlated with the citizens’ perception about water as a public good? It's been used data through a structured questionnaire (Zeneli F., WP-Questionnaire, 2015) about 160 families, were part of the survey; also data from General Directorate of Water in Albania; elaborated using statistical software IBM SPSS 21, to identify link between determinants of drinking water demand in the sector. The main conclusion is that citizens see the water provider service a public good, while from water suppliers water distributed is their product that provides their market position and their economic sustainability. Let this paper be one of the first in the topic to determine drinking water demand determinants in Vlora city.
Using the state agencies that regulate wastewater discharges to surface waters, this quantitative study examined the validity of three theories about the effects of decentralization on organizational outcomes. It also used qualitative analysis to probe the internal adjustments to optimize outcomes. Theoretical advantages to decentralized organizations can be summarized as greater effectiveness or greater efficiency. Effectiveness here is the rate of compliance with legal and permit requirements for dischargers adjusted for enforcement actions. The model used consists of decentralization independent variables, exogenous independent variables (e.g., population, funding), efficiency dependent variables, and compliance (or effectiveness) dependent variables. Model calibration applied principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis to questionnaire and other data for FY93 from 39 states. Key intervening variables -- information costs, innovation, and strategic planning -- characteristic of the theoretical effects of decentralization received special attention. Case studies based on interviews and document studies in five states illustrate key points. The large survey sample (78%) of the 50 states reduced threats to external validity. A significant relationship to decentralization was found for major permit processing time and percentage of expired permits. When controlled for exogenous variables, no compliance common factor related to decentralization, but medium-term compliance unit-cost did. Time is essential to all compliance common factors. Innovation, information cost, and strategic planning were not found to be intervening variables. Highly decentralized states were found to be trending towards increased centralization, and vice versa. All states make internal adjustments to optimize their programs, and some adjustments are powerful enough to make highly dissimilar organizations converge; strong basin planning is one such adjustment. Neither decentralization nor centralization is automatically the best way to organize a complex system. Devolution, where transfer of functions goes with significant delegation of authority to autonomous local units, would probably give superior environmental, economic, and administrative outcomes over a uniform approach.
Innovative Flexible Interior Gas Distribution Systems R.N. Torbin; R.N. Torbin Foster-Miller Inc. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar M. Wilkey; M. Wilkey Gas Research Inst. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar P. Belkus P. Belkus Foster-Miller Inc. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Paper presented at the SPE Gas Technology Symposium, Dallas, Texas, June 1988. Paper Number: SPE-17737-MS https://doi.org/10.2118/17737-MS Published: June 13 1988 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Get Permissions Search Site Citation Torbin, R.N., Wilkey, M., and P. Belkus. "Innovative Flexible Interior Gas Distribution Systems." Paper presented at the SPE Gas Technology Symposium, Dallas, Texas, June 1988. doi: https://doi.org/10.2118/17737-MS Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll ProceedingsSociety of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)SPE Unconventional Resources Conference / Gas Technology Symposium Search Advanced Search AbstractThe Gas Research Institute (GRI) is funding research to investigate alternative gas piping technologies which can make gas service as easy to install as electric service. The semirigid tubing systems being evaluated are soft copper tubing and a Japanese product, corrugated stainless steel tubing (CSST). Both use mechanical fittings and are designed to operate using either traditional low pressure (8 in. of water column (WC)) or a special hybrid pressure (2 psi and 8 in. WC) approach. This research has been conducted at several different single family and multifamily buildings located throughout the United States.Results from these sites indicate that regardless of the building type, semirigid tubing systems can be installed in less time and usually at lower cost than conventional steel pipe systems. The labor savings vary between 30 and 70 percent, while the cost savings vary between 10 and 50 percent. The use of these semirigid tubing systems also makes a decentralized gas distribution system more viable.BackgroundIn 1983, GRI began its Residential/Commercial Interior Piping Research Program. The first activity completed by GRI's research contract, Foster-Miller, Inc., was to determine the state of the art of interior gas piping systems found both in the United States and abroad. Subsequently, Foster-Miller developed an. optimized gas distribution system for the United States housing market based on commercially available piping technology.The most commonly used interior gas distribution system in the world is a series/branch arrangement using Schedule 40 steel pipe with threaded joints operated at low pressure (nominally 8 in. WC). Copper (either as semirigid tube or rigid pipe) is used in several countries for interior gas distribution, but far less frequently than steel pipe. The most innovative hardware discovered in the review is a CSST system with special mechanical fittings used exclusively in Japan. One innovative approach to the interior gas distribution was found in the United States, where copper tubing systems are operated at 2 psi pressure. Gas utilities using these semirigid (copper or CSST) tubing systems (both at low pressure and 2 psi) report cost reductions in the total installed cost when compared with the equivalent steel pipe system.Both the copper and the CSST systems have several advantages. The flexible nature of the tubing allows the system to be installed with a significant reduction (over the traditional steel pipe) in labor; the tubing is supplied in coils allowing long, continuous runs to be installed; thus minimizing the number of joints. Since there are fewer system components to handle, the overall installation time is less. -The semirigid tubing is easily snaked through or around existing structural obstacles which are typically faced when field-run systems are installed. Since the tubing components are lightweight, fewer installers are needed, with less effort required of the installers during installation.A series of initial field tests were completed at two single family sites. During these studies, the current installation practices and piping hardware were evaluated.P. 325^ Keywords: csst system, installation time, upstream oil & gas, installer, semirigid, installation, appliance, real estate, banking & finance, michigan city Subjects: Pipelines, Flowlines and Risers, Piping design and simulation This content is only available via PDF. 1988. Society of Petroleum Engineers You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.