Automated Data Acquisition for Water Metering System U sing Narrowband Internet of Things and Optical Character Recognition Engine

Industry 4.0, which is also called the Fourth In-dustrial Revolution, is opening a rise of connectivity, advanced analytics, automation, and advanced manufacturing technology that has been transforming human life rapidly. The topic in this research presents a new approach to improve the services of civil water meters by applying advanced technologies of the Industry 4.0 era that are currently available. The focus of this paper is two-fold; the first objective is to optimize the energy consumption of the data recording from digital meters having a built-in water flow sensor by leveraging the Narrowband Internet of Things (NBIoT). Applying communication technology based on NBIoT and a water turbine generator enhances energy efficiency for real-time water data monitoring, thereby supporting up to 5 years lifetime of the water sensor. The second objective is to support data collection from analog water meters, or mechanical water meters, which have been a traditional choice for measuring water consumption for many years, by using Tesseract Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify numbers on the surface of the water meter. Finally, from collected data from both digital and analog water meters, smart services will be proposed, including the detection water leaks, identifying phenomena like water meter reversals, or providing alerts when water usage exceeds thresholds in a month, aiming to efficient use of water resources.