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History of The Water Industry Telemetry Standards Group All UK Water Management organisations (UKWMOs) use telemetry to monitor and control their remote assets. Traditionally telemetry consists of from a few up to many thousands of remote Field Devices which are linked to a highly resilient central management system known as the Master Station. These devices provide a wide variety of data and information for the purpose of monitoring, alarming and controlling plant and other monitoring equipment. The link between Master Station and Field Device can be provided by a variety of communication methods: PSTN telephone, GSM, scanning radio, satellite and GPRS. This technique of remote asset management has been universally accepted as an essential business tool as it delivers the benefits of being able to reduce maintenance and operational costs, increase levels of monitoring and control of assets and to increase the efficiency of existing resources. Up to 2003 the evolution of telemetry systems had been driven by individual UKWMOs establishing contracts with a small group of suppliers, leading to a wide variety of single supplier standards. Although they were excellent systems these closed bespoke solutions prevented customers from taking advantage of other suppliers' emerging products as these were incompatible with the existing system. Also the UKWMOs had not yet realised the huge benefits of working together as an industry, taking joint responsibility for the development of the telemetry service within the water industry. The formation of WITS In 2003 a small group of like-minded individuals arranged a forum to bring the UKWMOs together, in order to co-ordinate communications and decision-making activities related to the joint development of telemetry standards in the water industry. Some 31 UKWMOs attended and a proposal was put forward to form The Water Industry Telemetry Standards group (WITS) Vision Statement A Vision Statement was produced: "To harness the combined strengths of knowledge, skills and influence of the water industry taking responsibility for the continuous improvement of telemetry technology and service through shared developments on behalf of the UK Water Management Organisations" It was resolved that elected members would endeavour to establish projects that could deliver significant benefits to the water industry as a whole. Delivery of these benefits would be achieved by collaborative working, sharing the risks and costs involved. The proposal received full support from the UKWMOs and led to the setting up of our first project: The establishment of the WITS Telemetry Protocol Standards There are many manufacturers of Field Devices and Master Stations, each of them using different methods of transmitting the data over the chosen communications medium. For this reason, it has not been cost effective to buy an outstation from supplier A and connect to a Master Station from supplier B as they will not "talk" to each other. This has resulted in a customer being effectively ‘locked in' to one supplier over the lifecycle of their telemetry equipment, unless they were willing to implement costly protocol emulations for each third party product. Also it was recognised there was an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between customers and suppliers by establishing a set of water industry approved core functionality requirements for telemetry systems. This would help focus future developments to meet the requirements of the industry and to shape investment. The WITS Group had clear support to investigate the feasibility of standardising the method of data transmission - known as the "telemetry protocol" - between Field Devices and Master Stations, in order to achieve interoperability between equipment from different suppliers - in other words, "Plug and Play" compatibility. Some of the benefits are listed below: Increase in product choice Reduction in product cost Simpler configuration Hardware, software and communications independence - ability to move away from bespoke systems Security of supply - not reliant on one supplier Innovation by device manufacturers - more market opportunities Reduced development time for solutions Flexibility and growth Data quality and consistency - Simplified infrastructure
Project Outline The project has been running now for over five years and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2009. The project vision is: "To evolve current technologies to a point where any remote field device is able to communicate with any telemetry system, facilitated through the use of a defined set of communication standards and protocols." The project has the following 5 stages: Initiation Feasibility Detailed design Test & pilot Industry adoption
Stages 4 & 5 have now been combined into one joint stage. Initiation The first stage of the project was Project Definition and to establish the terms of reference. This stage has now been completed. Feasibility It was decided after careful evaluation and consideration in May 2004 that the WITS Protocol Standard should follow and be a special subset of the existing DNP3 (Distributed Network Protocol) protocol, a proven standard being used world-wide. Whereas DNP3 was designed mainly for the electricity distribution industry, a special version of DNP3 ("WITS-DNP3") was considered necessary to fulfil the special requirements of the water industry. This stage has now been completed. Detailed design Production of detailed WITS-DNP3 Application Notes for use by manufacturers producing WITS-DNP3 compliant equipment. This stage has now been completed. Test and pilot / Industry adoption In conjunction with a group of telemetry equipment manufacturers, develop WITS-DNP3 compliant equipment and test it for performance and interoperability against the Protocol Standard. At the same time verify the content of the standard prior to formal release into the public domain. Promote and publicise the Protocol Standard, ensure industry take-up and devise methods for the long term maintenance and management of the Standard. The first 2 items - Feasibility and Detailed design - are now complete. The last two items - Test and pilot and Industry adoption - are currently in progress. This combined stage is now in progress. Refer to the Latest News page for programme and progress updates. Summary We hope this gives you a brief insight into the work of the WITS group. Malcolm Tyler - Chairman of the WITS Management Group
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