Water is the lifeline of any city, but for a metropolis like Navi Mumbai, managing its distribution is a colossal engineering challenge. With a network spanning kilometers of pipelines, dozens of Elevated Storage Reservoirs (ESRs), and Ground Storage Reservoirs (GSRs), the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) faces a daily battle: ensuring equitable water distribution while minimizing Non-Revenue Water (NRW).
For decades, the industry standard for managing such networks was the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system. While robust, traditional SCADA systems have a fatal flaw in the modern era: they are often “islanded.” They sit on a desktop in a control room, disconnected from the cloud, accessible only to a few, and often unable to “talk” to newer, smarter sensors.
At Samyak Instrumentation, we recently undertook one of our most ambitious projects to date: breaking these silos. We were tasked with digitizing the water monitoring infrastructure for 8+ major wards of Navi Mumbai—including CBD Belapur, Nerul, Vashi, Turbhe, and Airoli.
This was not a greenfield project where we could lay fresh cables and install brand-new sensors everywhere. This was a retrofit nightmare. We had to integrate existing legacy instruments with a new fleet of 100+ IoT Data Loggers, replacing the static local SCADA with a dynamic, web-based Remote Monitoring System (RMS).
In this case study, we break down the engineering challenges of this massive integration and how we solved them.
The Challenge: A Fragmented Network
When we audited the existing infrastructure, we found a classic “rich data, poor information” scenario.
The NMMC network is vast. It starts from the massive Morbe Dam supply lines and trickles down to specific sector tanks like “Nerul Sec 22 GSR” or “Vashi Sec 3 ESR.”
The problems were threefold:
- Data Silos: The “Totalizer 1” and “Totalizer 2” readings at the Main Transmission line were often disconnected from the local ward readings. 2
- Manual Dependency: A significant portion of the daily reporting relied on manual logbooks. Operators at locations like the Turbhe Pump House or Kopar-Khirane Teen Taki would manually record flow and pressure data, leading to inevitable human errors and timing mismatches. 333
- Hardware Incompatibility: The network had a mix of old flow meters from various manufacturers and completely unmonitored zones. To get a “Unified View,” we needed a device that could speak multiple languages—Modbus, 4-20mA, and Pulse—simultaneously.
The Solution: The Samyak IoT Backbone
We didn’t just propose a software upgrade; we overhauled the physical data acquisition layer. The core of our solution was the deployment of 100+ Industrial IoT Gateways and Data Loggers.
1. The “Hybrid” Integration Strategy
We couldn’t rip out the old sensors. Instead, we used our IoT Data Loggers as “Translators.”
- For Existing Meters: We connected our gateways to the RS-485 ports of the existing flow meters found at key transmission points like Mahape and Vashi. Our loggers read the raw register data, encrypted it, and transmitted it via 4G directly to the central server.
- For Unmonitored Zones: In areas where no digital output was available, or where new parameters like Chlorine (ppm) and Pressure needed monitoring, we installed new sensors connected directly to our loggers. 444
This created a seamless fabric where a 10-year-old flow meter in Belapur and a brand-new Chlorine sensor in Ghansoli were reporting to the same dashboard with the same latency.
2. Ward-Wise Granularity
The scale of this installation was massive. We had to segregate data logically for the hardware to handle the throughput without data loss. We divided the architecture into “Ward Clusters”:
- CBD Belapur Cluster: Handling 12 critical locations including CBD Sec 1 and Diwale Gaon. 55
- Vashi Cluster: The largest density with 11 locations, including the high-demand Vashi Sec 10 Hospital line. 6
- Turbhe & Sanpada Cluster: Covering critical industrial zones. 77
Each cluster had dedicated IoT gateways configured to “Store and Forward.” This meant that if the GPRS network in a remote area like Digha went down, the device would store the packet locally and upload it the second connectivity was restored, ensuring zero data gaps in the final reports.
From Hardware to Insight: The “Totalizer” Logic
One of the critical engineering requirements was the “Totalizer” reconciliation.
In water management, the math must balance. The water leaving the Water Treatment Plant (WTP) must roughly match the sum of water received at the Ward reservoirs.
Our IoT solution implemented a complex “Virtual Totalizer” logic.
We monitored the Main Transmission Lines (Totalizer 1 & 2) and compared them in real-time against the aggregate inflow of the Wards (e.g., Sum of Nerul + Vashi + Airoli inflows). 8
Previously, this calculation was done in Excel sheets at the end of the month. Now, our IoT Edge devices perform these pre-calculations before sending the data to the server, allowing for instant “Loss Alerts” if the deviation exceeds a set percentage.
Why This Matters for Smart Cities
This project proves that “Smart Cities” don’t always need brand-new infrastructure. They need smart integration.
By choosing a retrofit IoT solution over a complete overhaul, NMMC saved millions in CAPEX and reduced implementation time by months.
Today, when a Chief Engineer at NMMC opens their dashboard, they don’t see a static SCADA screen. They see a living, breathing digital twin of Navi Mumbai’s water supply—powered by Samyak Instrumentation’s hardware.
Get in touch with Samyak Instrumentation for more details on data logger. To know more about IIoT application visit FactoryX.