Buoy Status Monitoring with LoRa

The Netherlands are well-known for their inland waterways, canals, sluices and of course port activities. The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure indicates that there are thousands of buoys and fixed items in and near water environments that would profit from IoT monitoring. One of the problems with buoys for example, is that they get hit by ships and the anchor cable breaks. Without connectivity, it takes quite some time to find out that something has happened with that buoy. Not to mention the costs of renting a boat to go to the buoy to fix it. Another important issue, is that there is no real-time monitoring of the buoys at this moment. Only by physically visiting the object on the water, one gains insight in its status.

The Ministry of Infrastructure was specifically looking for an easy-to-deploy solution to gain insight in the status, movements and possible damages of the buoys with the aim to control them more effectively and efficiently. In other words: transforming each buoy into a Smart Asset without any programming needed. By effortlessly integrating water resistant battery powered LoRa sensors that communicate sensor data to the public LoRa network, combined with the AKURU Cloud Platform and specific algorithms, extremely valuable insights of the condition of the buoys are provided to the Ministry of Infrastructure.

• [Process Optimization - Real Time Monitoring]
  The battery level of the sensor, the map-based GPS-localisation, the tilt status and a possible collision of each buoy can now be monitored remotely.
• [Process Optimization - Remote Control]
  The status of thousands of buoys can be monitored remotely without having to visit each buoy or item on the water for controlling their condition.