City of Calgary grows smart city with tree watering solution
The City of Calgary has more than 10,000 hectares of parkland and natural areas. The City’s objective is to ensure consistent tree growth for the future and ensure their survival. Given its size, the City needed to monitor the amount used for tree watering. Together with the CTM-200 wireless gateway and the Cypress VUE telematics platform, Cypress Solutions successfully designed and manufactured an industrial-grade flow measuring system for the City’s water delivery fleet.
The Challenge – Finding a dependable method for monitoring tree watering
The process at the time did not allow the Parks business unit of the municipality to accurately measure when the trees are being watered, if they are being watered properly or are being watered at all. In order to track the work and save on replacement costs, the City needed answers to the above challenges. In addition to the water amount used, the proposed system should provide additional metrics including notification of location, time of watering, and the limit when the maximum water allocation is reached. The resulting data will allow the Urban Forest group to plot the route of watering trucks and see how much water is used at different locations.
The Solution – Using the CTM-200’s advanced functionality
With key requirements in mind, Cypress Solutions proposed a simple but durable system. The solution leveraged the advanced functionality of the CTM-200 – an industrial cellular device that transmits the water flow data in real-time. The CTM-200 along with all flow system components were placed within a standard Pelican™ case equipped with indicator lights to display system status. The case is then mounted to the watering truck with an external power cable.
Consequently, the water flow data is sent to the Cypress VUE platform for real-time viewing of dispersed amounts on each tree.
The Result – Efficient use of resources
Through the customization of the CTM-200 device and Cypress VUE software development, City of Calgary successfully optimized its business process model for the tree irrigation system to maximize efficient use of resources.
