Seoul (Korea) Online Water Quality Monitoring of Drinking Water

In the Metropolis of Seoul, Republic of Korea, more than 10.42million citizens are supplied with potable water by the waterworks Seoul metropolitan government. Seoul's waterworks now has a total of 6 treatment plants with a total daily production capacity of 5.10million m³ (2007). An average daily production of 3.34million m³ (2006) is guaranteed. This water is transmitted via a supply network consisting of more than 14,106Km of mains covering nearly 1.96 mil. taps. The distribution system includes 109 reservoirs (total storage volume: 2.35 million m³) that provide emergency storage, balance water demands, and equalize pressure. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has various policies aimed at providing our citizens with safe and tasty tap water. We have a real time monitoring system to thoroughly manage the production and supply processes from the water supply sources to every household. The automatic water quality monitoring system was completed in July, 2006 according to a Seoul Water-Now Plan (Feb. 2001). The water quality is monitored for 24 hours from the water source supply to the tap to secure safety of water, and the data is positively used to raw water monitoring, optimum water purification treatment and safe water distribution control. The real-time monitoring data is opened to the public through the homepage from 2008 March 21. Web site' address is http://water.seoul.go.kr/waternow/RealDataFullScale.php. 13 items are monitored including turbidity, residual chlorine, water temperature, etc. and 72 places consisting of 6 intakes, 6 water purifying plants and 60 supply places are monitored. It is planned to enlarge to 145 places to be monitored until 2010. As a result of running the system, The online monitoring system were contributed to maintain the safety of water quality from the source water to the tap water