IOT to Combat Climate Change in West Africa: Development of IoT-Driven Smart Water Use and Control Meter (SWUCOM) to Mitigate Shower Water Waste in Niger

Abstract

Water-saving devices (WSDs) are well-known examples of Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs) used for water conservation and waste reduction. This work presents the development of an Internet of Things (IoT) based EST prototype of a WSD system for mitigationdriven shower water management in Niamey hotels. The developed Smart Water Use and Control Meter (SWUCOM) device was tested for three (3) days. The results show that the average daily shower water per guest in Niamey hotels is estimated at 92.07L. Furthermore, when making assumptions in some scenarios, it is demonstrated that SWUCOM can reduce the amount of shower water consumed by up to 45.70%. With its various features, the use of SWUCOM goes beyond shower water management. The paper therefore also highlights SWUCOM potential use as a smart meter in water distribution and consumption in cities and in irrigated agriculture, and its envisaged improvement to target smart cities and smart agriculture development in West Africa.