How AUTEC safeguards our drinking water

Dispersed locations and varying control systems

Barely anyone talks about plants for the supply of drinking water or treatment of wastewater, yet they are of immense importance for both consumers and business. Fortunately, untreated wastewater or water shortages are not a common occurrence. Security of supply is ensured by the interaction and precise control of systems in our water supplies. Process control systems have to take into account the fact that waterworks, reservoirs, treatment and sewage plants are often operated in a dispersed manner and are also frequently located in remote places. Exchanging data for status information and remote control is of particular importance here.

Connecting the installations to a centralised process control system

AUTEC Softwareentwicklung und Hardwareplanung GmbH uses gateways from INSYS icom to connect all the water supply or treatment plants under management to various process control systems. In this solution parameters converge and the controls are visually supported. The plants are linked up via redundant paths, for example using existing WAN solutions or often also by means of a 4G connection. This means that a line failure doesn’t result in any operational disruptions. Data communication between the stations in the plant network and the process control system is encrypted. Remote maintenance access for troubleshooting is also encrypted via the VPN solution provided by INSYS icom.

Security of supply, a high level of efficiency

Modular, secure and redundantly designed data communication ensures the connection and at the same time the high availability of existing plants and new installations. This enables reliable management via the process control system. The municipal operators reduce costs and maintenance work and can plan their processes more efficiently without any special IT expertise to operate the system.