While SmartGrid is the current darling, I got to thinking about M2M and the management of Water. No offense to Power, but I can live without for a while. I will not know what to do with myself, but I will live. Without water crops die as well and in California water is scarce. (Think of how many shows you have seen where the LA River concrete channel is used for car chase scenes.)

In fact, California has such a concern about water and they have an urban and agricultural balance to maange. Of course have what every bureaucracy needs; Acronyms. The Department of Water Resources has the California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS). CIMIS is a program in the Office of Water Use Efficiency (OWUE). CIMIS have a system of weather stations designed to track their irrigation needs.

This system is used to estimate rain fall, predict evaporation and plant use of the water (called transpiration). From the gathered information farms can manage their irrigation strategy. Sounds good but the problem is that the information is timely but irrigation systems needed automation.

In a case study on Numerex’s website, ETwater is sited as working with them to support 2600 acre system. The irrigation system consisted of 323 (that number sounds familiar) controllers and on average manually would require 20 minutes for a person to make the adjustment. Calculating that out it would take a team of 25 workers over 4 hours to make the adjustment. However, ETwater and Numerex (News - Alert) utilized M2M technologies to make it so the irrigation system simultaneously changed with just a few keystrokes.

It required a strategy that avoided fixed line and cellular modem strategy, which was replaced by the Numerex Networx, which is a managed service utilizing a variety of carriers. Numerex was part of the solution offered by ETwater.

ETwater knows the lay of the land, from paved service to soil requirements, from fauna to run off. ETwater markets their solutions being applied in corporate, municipal and residential communities.

For this implementation the return on investment was calculated at less than two years with an assumption that a 5 percent rise in price was probable.

The reality is that water is a worldwide concern and systems and sensors that alarm, track and predict for a variety of reasons including terror are being deployed. It looks like a good business to support. ETwater and Numerex are in businesses that show the value of sensors being combined with applications.   Let’s hope that their sensors stay all wet.

I want to point out that Numerex’s CTO, Jeff Smith (News - Alert), will be speaking at the M2M Conference collocated with ITEXPO (News - Alert) West on October 5 in Los Angeles on behalf of the TIA and not for Numerex directly.