• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.12
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• pp.863-870
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• 2012

The market trends of automatic meter reading associated with smart water meters were investigated. Also, recent developments and field applications of key technology for automatic meter reading associated with smart water meters were analyzed. Smart water meters have been manufactured mostly in United States and Europe and have been expanded their business to Asia. Integrated water management system combining with the additional functions such as real-time consumption metering, cost notification, water conservation, leak detection, water quality monitoring, and flow control have been operated in automatic meter reading. Both water quality and quantity data measured from smart water meters and sensors were transferred to data concentration units through neighborhood area network, and then were transferred to integrated server through wide area network. The data transfer methods were determined by comprehensively considering urban scale, density of smart water meters, power supply and network topologies. Common data collection methods such as fixed network to data concentation units, vehicles drive by, people walk by, and drone fly by have been applied. The automatic meter reading associated with smart water meters are spread throughout the world, and both water and energy savings result in saving the money and reducing the greenhouse gases emission.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.10
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• pp.656-663
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• 2012

After the construction of waterworks automatic meter reading with 15 mm diameter digital water mater with magnetoresistance sensor developed in this study at 96 households of apartment complexes located in Incheon-City B-Gu S-Dong, the feasibility of field application of waterworks automatic meter reading was evaluated. The field application of waterworks automatic meter reading was performed from July to December in 2011, and average reception rate was as low as 84.6% due to the instable wibro networks, the existence of communication blackout and temporary malfunction of router. After the extraction of 10 households with one to five residents out of 96 households by using stratified random sampling method and analysis of domestic water use, it was found that domestic water use was significant at August and showed a decreasing trend at September, followed by increase in domestic water use at November and decrease in domestic water use at December. This phenomenon should be attributed to weather factors (temperature, humidity, etc.), which significantly affected domestic water use. Similar trend in domestic water use in terms of weather factors was obtained in case of Liter per capita day of water use after the extraction of 30 households out of 96 households by using stratified random sampling method. After analysis of Liter per capita day for 96 households, single residents increases resulted in reduction of domestic water usage by about 14% of Liter per capita day. These results might be due to the fact that domestic water usage such as laundry, beverages, catering, cleaning, etc. should be required for even the household with one resident, whereas domestic water usage for those common utilization can be significantly saved for the household with more than one resident.