‘Eye in the sky’ tracks city’s manhole dangers
Print Edition
A trial project to monitor manhole covers in Baoshan District — to warn if they are missing or to sense dangers such as a gas leak — will be extended to more districts to help avoid accidents across the city, the scheme’s developer said yesterday.
The success of the pilot scheme using China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, similar to GPS, was outlined at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai yesterday.
The tracking system has been used in 12,000 sewage manholes in Baoshan District since last year, according to its developer, the Shanghai BeiDou Satellite Navigation Platform Co.
Before the trial scheme was launched, authorities mainly relied on regular patrolling or reports from local residents to spot missing manhole covers.
Sometimes it would be days before a disappearance was logged.
“This can be very dangerous for people and vehicles on roads,” the company’s general manger, Chen Dawu, said.
“But with the tracking system, the authorities and responsible maintenance crews can be informed of the missing cover within a few seconds.”
Chen said the company has improved reliability of the system with the most recent upgrade, which has made the units more durable and resistant to corrosion and other stress factors.
Next year, the third version of the system will be further upgraded to include a sensor.
“The devices can detect if some important parameters are reaching threshold levels,” Chen said.
“So we can spot water or gas leaks early and therefore avoid bigger losses.”
The upgraded system is expected to be applied in more districts and on more varieties of manholes next year.
The company is also working on other applications for the BeiDou system, such as “trustable payments.”
Using the satellite technology in cooperation with banks, the location of users can be verified before transactions are processed – particularly useful in scams over telecommunications networks as scammers are generally in different cities or even different countries than they claim to be in.
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