From July 27th to August 8th, the 21st World Scout Jamboree was held in Hylands Park, Chelmsford, with 40,000 attendees of all ages taking part. To help cope with the extra demands made on the water network during these two weeks, Essex and Suffolk Water brought in two Radcom Multilog SMS loggers to monitor the situation.
The presence of such a large temporary population had raised a number of operational concerns for the utilities company, and careful planning was required to prevent any potential problems for the existing customers in the area. In order to proactively monitor network performance, it was decided that the primary requirement was an ability to see the actual demands made on the system by the jamboree – and the effects this had on water pressure in the surrounding area. With this monitoring, it was possible to effectively manage the impact made by the event, ensuring continued, untroubled service.
Neil Humphrey, Network Data Technician for Essex and Suffolk Water, explained the situation: “Due to the remoteness of the revenue meter supplying the event, arranging a suitable telemetry link was both expensive and impractical. This led us to think about SMS data technology in a ‘temporary deployment mode.’ We decided to use two Radcom Multilog SMS loggers – one to connect directly to a fire hydrant via a cap to just record pressure, and the other on the water meter to record flow data. The information we received helped us to efficiently and effectively manage the network and to react to demand anomalies in real time. We were also able to advise the water supply team at the event itself of the flow rates and volumes of water recorded.” The loggers have now been retrieved from their sites, ready to be used on further projects, including trunk mains maintenance and isolation operations on water towers and reservoirs.
Source: Halma PR Services Ltd
