Aquafin

Smart Company Project: Aquafin

Aquafin collects household wastewater in Flanders and treats it until it’s clean to be returned to nature. Its core activities are operational management, asset management of the infrastructure and further expansion and optimization of the water treatment infrastructure. This infrastructure consists of water treatment plants, sludge treatment plants, wastewater pipelines (collectors and sewers), pumping stations and other peripheral infrastructure.
Logo van Aquafin boven een moeder eend die met haar kuikens over een rustige waterplas zwemt, omringd door riet.

What was needed?

Aquafin purchased measurement devices to monitor their treatment plants and pipelines. These measurement devices contain IoT units. There were two types of devices installed at Aquafin:
  • Overflow meter: measuring device that registers the water level at an overflow point.
  • Sampling device: device that periodically takes a sample at the inflow and outflow of a treatment plant and drops it in a canister for later analysis in the lab. Sensors monitor the quality of this process.
To manage these devices, Aquafin wished to implement Azure’s IoT solutions in the company’s environment. That is where we – Sirus – entered the picture. In addition, Aquafin had little to no experience with Edge computing. Through the implementation of a specific use case “Control of gas engine – optimization in the light of electricity prices”, Aquafin wanted to become adept in Edge computing.
Man glimlacht terwijl hij achter zijn bureau werkt met computerschermen op de achtergrond en een oranje drinkfles op zijn bureau.

What Sirus provided

We set up Azure IoT Central in the Aquafin environment and onboarded the first overflow and sampling devices. We provided Aquafin with guidelines on how to continue from there. 

The solution had to meet Aquafin’s specific security requirements. For this reason, IoT Central was set up with private endpoints and devices can only authenticate using X.509 certificates. To provide IoT Central with additional information, we added several specific Azure functions.

Technicalities of the project

  • Azure IoT Central (set up using terraform)
  • Azure functions
  • Azure DevOps
Luchtfoto van een waterzuiveringsinstallatie met een groot circulair bassin en wandelpaden eromheen, geplaatst in een driehoek met een oranje rand.

What's next?

We support Aquafin in their data architecture, in close coordination with enterprise architecture, data governance and the various data teams. We work on a global information model, overall vision and guidelines around data architecture, and help in visioning and improving the approach to data exchange.

What our Sirus members think about the case?

“Aquafin’s additional security requirements provided us with a nice learning opportunity.”
Thomas D’Hauwe
Thomas D’Hauwe
Data Engineer

What did the customer think?

“The Sirus consultants are experts guiding us through the technical implementation of our projects."
Representation of interconnected gears with icons, depicting technology systems and solutions.

Smart Company Project

At Sirus, innovation is at our core. We strive to help build the Smart Companies of the future, and Aquafin is now part of this innovative future. We are proud to be a part of this collaboration, and if you are to – be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for updates!

Interested to be a part of projects like the Smart Company Project for Aquafin? Learn more about Sirus’ Smart Company Approach and don’t hesitate to take a look at our careers page!