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By Satish Sangameswaran, Principal Program Manager, and Vani Mandava<\/a>, Director, Data Science<\/em><\/p>\n The newspaper headlines about \u201cBangalore\u2019s looming water crisis\u201d have been ominous, with one urban planning expert proclaiming that Bangalore will become \u201cunlivable\u201d in a few years because of water scarcity. This is a critical issue that threatens the future of one of India\u2019s fastest-growing cities. In fact, water availability is a cause for worry in the entire country. According to an estimate by The Asian Development Bank, India will have a water deficit of 50% by the year 2030.<\/p>\n The primary source of water for Bangalore is the Cauvery river, which is located some 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) from the city. Because the monsoon does not always bring dependable rain, planners must maximize the efficiency of distribution of water from the source, and avoid depletion of the ground water table level. A key challenge in the area of water management in Bangalore 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. IISc is India\u2019s oldest and among the most revered academic institutions, with a sprawling green campus in the heart of Bangalore. Under the aegis of a national initiative called Smart Cities (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Professor Yogesh Simmhan and his fellow researchers 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.<\/p>\n Using services from Microsoft\u2019s 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. \u201cWe are looking at the Internet of Things as a technology platform for enabling smart cities\u2026we use Microsoft Azure Cloud for collecting data, hosting it and processing it in the cloud\u201d, says Simmhan, principal investigator for the project and assistant professor in the computational and data sciences at IISc.<\/p>\n