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2018 Commonwealth Games – water network bioterrorism protection

Problem statement

In 2018, the City of the Gold Coast hosted the Commonwealth Games. The City needed immediate warning of any deliberate contamination of drinking water. A baseline data model of 1 year of verified 24/7/5 minute water quality measurements was made at 9 key sites. Any deviations from the water quality baseline could signal a potential water quality bio-terrorism event. Risk mitigation required water quality monitoring to be independent of water utility systems and to be resilient during cyclones, floods, power outages and cyber-attacks.

TracWater solution

  • In 2016, 9 TracWater DMA plug-and-play robots were installed into key critical sites on the water network, measuring water quality in real-time and reporting every 5 minutes.

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  • Each self-powered robot measured key parameters, including the world’s first battery powered Total Organic Carbon sensor to identify the signature of organic contamination.

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  • Each TracWater robot was fully integrated with TracWater’s super-speed cloud based big data engines providing cloud-based real-time interactive analysis, friendly UI, control room vision and alerts.

TracWater bioterrorism monitoring

  • Enabled the water utility to see any sign of contamination.

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  • Faster and better decisions which proved critical water quality delivery was maintained at all times.

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  • The battery powered Total Organic Carbon sensors monitored the water supply for 3 years 24x7x365, reporting every 5 minutes until they were decommissioned in 2019.

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  • Verified correct operation of SCADA-controlled water treatment plants and water delivery systems independently for security and resilience.

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  • Have operated without a single failure during flood, cyclones and power outages when parts of SCADA systems (costing millions of $) failed – TracWater provided mission critical water quality verification in these extreme events.

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