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Nov. 4, 2008 - We asked Sujatha Bodapati,
founder of Asset Pulse, if what we heard was true: that
her company is involved with an RFID water tracking project.
We were close.
I hear that
you have been using RFID with water facilities. It sounds
so incongruous, could you tell us about that?
BODAPATI: Sure. There is a
water company that we are working with in California.
Is this municipal water?
BODAPATI: They are the company that supplies
water to residents of a particular city in California.
They have a few pump stations and a main office. They
need to be able to track their employees entering and
exiting all their pumping stations: when they enter, how
long they are there at the pump station and when they
exit.
So these would be
facilities that are spread out over a geographical area?
BODAPATI: Exactly. And typically
these facilities don't have anybody there, just a building
with a pump inside and a lock on the door and the cage.
So there is no one there to track who comes in and how
long they are there. Now they are able to record, if you
will, when someone comes in, how long they were there
at the pump station and when they left.
Security
is one aspect that they are looking at, right?
BODAPATI: Yes.
What
other types of data do they collect? Is there anything
else that improves their efficiency besides security aspect?
BODAPATI: Yes. Sometimes they
have contract labor they are required to pay by hour.
This way they are also able to track time and attendance
and pay based on work that was done.
Now,
are these personnel badges essentially that they are using?
BODAPATI: Yes. Badges that
they hang either on their neck or somewhere on them.
At what frequency are they working?
BODAPATI: This is active RFID,
433 MHz.
Why did they choose active
for this project?
BODAPATI:
Because they needed to track people over a larger distance.
You have your pump station and then they have an area
around the pump station that is all enclosed within a
fence and a gate.
They want to know if anyone is within the fence, even
if they are outside the building. So we can manage it
with just one reader. Otherwise you would have had to
have more readers.
I see. And do
they actually do any, like sub-tracking of when someone
would be working on a particular pump? I don't know much
about water facilities.
BODAPATI:
Actually it becomes a little tricky to be able to compartmentalize
the area, if you will. So, it is just are they are on
the facility or not.
Since your
client has been using this technology, have they found
anything that surprised them?
BODAPATI:
It gives them a lot more visibility into what is happening
at the pump station. Otherwise there is none, because
no one is there. They don’t know who walks in and
walks out.
This has been great for them from a visibility standpoint.
And now they have taken the same technology and started
tracking some of the meters that they take to the residencies
to record.
Sure.
BODAPATI:
So those meters in their office are being tracked.
So they would be tagging the meters as well?
BODAPATI: Yes.
And
does this help them satisfy any kind of government regulations
or monitoring that they must go through?
BODAPATI: Right. They actually started
looking at this technology to meet some compliance regulations.
And then they have kind of taken it and moved it around
and they saw the value in it and have now started using
it for other purposes.
For the future,
do you see other municipal facilities like this having
an interest from people you have spoken to?
BODAPATI: Absolutely. And so that
is interestingly they are watching how this deployment
goes before it becomes something that they will start
thinking about.
Click
here to view the original article posted at RFIDswitchboard.
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