Australian Water Management Review Vol. 1 2014 | Page 72
CAse studY:
CAlgArY, CAnAdA
The Client
The City of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada
Calgary is a city with a population of 1,100,000 covering
746 square kilometers (288.032 square miles). More than
1.5 million people live in the greater Calgary area.
The Project
Water resource management, using the best available
technologies and practices, to meet the growing
horticultural needs of Calgary-area parks, open
spaces, recreational sites, and landscaped areas.
Goals and Challenges
The water control and monitoring solution had to
include over 1,000 parks and landscaped areas,
including a number of LEED certified buildings.
The Mottech Solution
Calgary boasts the largest and most sophisticated
municipal application of the IRRInet system,
manufactured by Motorola Inc., using IRRInet Control
Center (ICC) and Irrigation Management Solution (IMS)
software for water management.
The ICC manages the water flow and distribution to
1,059 parks and landscaped areas, including several
buildings at a fire department training center. There are
currently 1,450 IRRInet controllers in the field, with new
ones going in every week, for 15,628 valves.
Using Dell quad-core servers, parks authority
operators program and monitor water delivery from
one central location. They receive reports of water
consumption and accumulation from each valve, as
well as alerts of abnormal events such as low flow,
high flow, no flow, or a burst main line.
Throughout the parks and the landscaped sites, the
city installed the following irrigation controllers:
• IRRInet ACE
• IRRInet M
• Scorpios
• IRRInet XM
• IRRIcom
• Piccolo XR
All the Motorola controllers communicate via a
network of low- and high-power UHF frequencies,
high-power 800MHz frequency, and eight nodes of
GPRS modems linked through the wireless provider.
Results and Benefits
With the Mottech solution in place, the City of Calgary
Parks Department has reduced its water costs by
about $4,000,000 annually. The customer also saves
approximately $3,100,000 every year in labor, vehicle,
and equipment expenses for manually managing citywide irrigation systems.
The IRRInet-ICC solution, with total system control,
can be expanded and modified to meet changing
municipal needs. And even in the case of infrastructure
disruptions, IRRInet’s redundant communication paths
ensure increased reliability and system continuity.
What the Client Says
“It is our practice to evaluate the effectiveness of our
system and compare the systems actual water use.
We have found that the Motorola system achieves a
conservative 45% reduction in water consumption
compared to our baseline irrigation water budget
calculations. In fact, we have sites that experience as
much as a 75% reduction in water use related to the
system’s ability to adjust the amount of water being
applied…” – Denis K Gourdeau, Water Management
Coordinator, Resource Management - Parks, the City
of Calgary
Mottech Presents Motorola IRRInet
The Comprehensive Remote Irrigation Management System
Turf & Landscape
Water Distribution
For agriculture, urban water control, turf and landscape irrigation, infrastructure projects, and more.
“We’ve had the IRRInet system in operation for 9 successful years, effectively enabling us to manage
water distribution for 30 city parks, [and] save on costs by efficient reuse of water and natural water
collection...” Stephen Comben, Strategic Projects & Operation Coordinator, Parks and Gardens, City
of Whittlesea, Australia
Robust and reliable real - time remote monitoring, automated irrigation, water delivery, and flow control
Field-proven durability in the most challenging environmental conditions
Modular and scalable - from the smallest area to thousands of hectares, with unlimited field controllers
Fully pre-tested and project configured
State - of - the - art off - the - shelf equipment made by Motorola
Advanced data handling, trend analysis, and reports
Connectivity with external sensors and devices
Highly qualified technical support, consulting, and remote operation services
With more than 23 years of experience, dedicated service, and top-tier technology, Mottech brings the
most advanced and cost-effective centralized irrigation control solution available anywhere straight to the
Australian market.
Municipal Water
Special Projects
Just ask some of those who’ve already chosen IRRInet: Melbourne, Whittlesea, Boroondara, Randwick, North
Sydney, Sutherland Shire, Toowoomba, Donovan Avocados in Queensland, and the Townsville Council.
Mottech Water Management PO Box 11 Harrisville Queensland, Australia 4307 T: (07) 546 71001, M: 0488 661036
E:[email protected] www.mottech.com
Mottech is a worldwide master distributor of Motorola's IRRInet systems
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Agricultural