According to an estimate by The Asian Development Bank, India will have a water deficit of 50% by the year 2030. A key challenge in the area of water management in Bangalore, India is tracking consumption. Currently, a staggering one-third of the water pumped is unaccounted for, in terms of usage. This is the problem that a team of scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is looking to solve. Under the aegis of a national initiative called Smart Cities, IISc have deployed an Internet of Things IoT-based network of sensors in the IISc campus to efficiently monitor the flow of water from source to consumption.

Using services from Microsoft’s Azure, the project harnesses the power of the cloud to collect and process data from the network of IoT sensors. An important facet of this effort is monitoring each node of this network to generate alerts and glean insights from the data. Azure Event Hubs enable such functions as receiving water quality incident alerts from specific locations via a smartphone app. Leveraging the advanced analytics capabilities available on Azure, the team can make decisions to ensure that available water is efficiently pumped to every building on campus.

More information can be found on Microsoft's Research Blog.