Intelligent Well Cover: Digitization, Quick Warning, and Forecast Solution

Intelligent well cover system is just like a digital nervous system inside a smart city.

Smart city has become the fourth wave after industrialization, informatization and electrification. Its construction is the frontier trend of global urban development.

Nowadays, many urban drainage pipelines are often blocked, which seriously reduces their efficiency, causes frequent water accumulation on roads, greatly affecting daily life and travel.

In addition, manhole covers are sometimes stolen or damaged, leading to dangerous situations where pedestrians may fall into open sewers.

Heavy traffic on roads further worsens congestion and disrupts people’s mobility.

Therefore, it is essential to implement systematic management to address these municipal challenges.

Advanced technology — such as intelligent sensing, the rapid development and deployment of NB-IoT mobile communication, and the widespread availability of broadband Internet — provide a solid technical foundation for building intelligent municipal management systems for smart cities.

How We Help with Intelligent Well Cover Project

System function

We help build an smart well water system for better municipal management platform to city managers.

They can remotely monitor the status of water well covers, traffic flow, pipeline blockage and other information.

They can also timely alarm when problems occur and make more efficient solutions in a visual way.

Basic design ideas

2.1 Water flow condition monitoring

Each node uses the ultrasonic module to detect the height of water level, and compares the height of water level between the adjacent nodes.

That will tell you when a blockage occurs on smart well cover.

Collecting the information of water level at each moment is for forming the height curve of water level.

When the height of water level increases too fast, the alarm is triggered.

The module is placed at the top of the culvert near the well to eliminate the influence of uneven ground.

The principle of ultrasonic ranging is to measure the time it takes for the sound wave.

The ultrasonic wave can reflect back from an obstacle after it is launched based on the known propagation speed.

Then calculate the actual distance from the launching point to the obstacle according to the time difference between the launching and receiving.

When the water level of adjacent nodes is different, it can be highlighted in the upper computer software, so as to solve the problem faster.

2.2 Well cover status detection

The gyroscope module is used to detect the change of the shaft cover angle.

They can judge whether the cover is loose or opened without any reason, and complete the function of anti-theft and detection of looseness.

MPU6050, as well system components, has the function of angular acceleration and acceleration detection with pretty high precision.

It can detect micro changes of angle by easily adopting the I2C communication protocol.

By attaching the MPU6050 horizontally below the well cover, the module can detect the change of the angle and provide instant feedback when well cover is opened.

If a water well cover becomes loose, its angle will shift slightly when a person or vehicle passes over it.

The data collected by the MPU6050 sensor can be used to determine the condition of the cover.

When the inclination exceeds 30°, the well system judges that the well casing cover has been opened.

If the angle remains within -5° to 5° but shows constant fluctuation, it is considered to be loose.

2.3 Surface environmental monitoring

Different types of sensors are equiped to collect data.

Sensors and a communication module are all housed within the water well cover’s enclosure.

This entire well system is powered by a long-life primary lithium or HPC battery.

Finally, real-time data will be provided from intelligent well water system under the underground infrastructure.

By monitoring humidity and temperature, we can enhance public safety, improve maintenance efficiency, and protect the environment.

2.3.1 Humidity detection

The humidity sensor, installed below the water well covers continuously, measures the humidity status under low-power condition.

After the microcontroller transmits the data, the central cloud-based platform will react at the same time for each node.

When the humidity level exceeds the predefined threshold, such as 10% or 95%, the well systems trigger an alert.

By reacting to changes in humidity, the intelligent well cover helps urban management teams detect potential issues such as surface water ingress, a failing seal, or an increased risk of corrosion inside the well, improving maintenance efficiency and infrastructure safety.

2.3.2 Temperature detection

A small, low-power temperature sensor is built into the smart well cover.

It continuously measures the temperature inside the well and can be paired with an external sensor for comparison.

The cloud platform from central processing system is configured with specific temperature thresholds.

This allows the well system to detect extreme conditions, unusual changes, and potential problems related to the well’s contents or the integrity of the cover.

The temperature sensor LM35DZ is small and flexible yet with high accuracy(two decimal points) as smart well water system components.

It helps to decide whether to generate heat on cooling condtion and predict for the future temperature as well.

By doing so, the temperature sensor on the intelligent well cover system will finally ensure the safety of infrastructure, prevent damage from freezing, and proactively maintain critical assets.

2.4 Traffic flow monitoring

Intelligent well cover systems can track traffic flow by using embedded sensors that detect the weight, vibration, and presence of passing vehicles.

The well system, which includes that accelerometers and gyroscopes, collects, transmits and analyzes the pressure and movement on the water well cover to determine the frequency and type of traffic.

The main advantages of the module are as follows:

• Small and flexible size: The module can be easily used and installed in the well systems with switch interface and UART serial port;
• High sensitivity: The module is very sensitive to the change of the earth’s magnetic field, and can detect the vehicle movement beyond 3 meters;
• Ultra low power consumption: The average working current of the module is less than 200 μA with working voltage lower than 2.0 V, which can maximize the service life of the battery.

2.5 Data transmission

In an intelligent well cover system, the goal is usually to detect abnormal states (looseness, tilt, impact, opening, flooding, etc.) and transmit that information to a monitoring platform.

2.5.1 NB-IOT part

Nb-IOT is used to send the information processed by Central controller (Beaglebone) to Internet.

Using NB-IOT to transmit data has the following advantages:

• NB-IOT signal covers a wide range, which can ensure the smooth transmission of all data to the Internet;
• The network speed can reach about 20 K per second, which is enough to transmit data;
• Compared with SMS, the cost of using NB-IOT to do data transmission is lower;
• Using serial communication protocol is easy to operate.

 

2.5.2 Server part

Considering that the IP address used by NB-IOT module is randomly assigned, users also need to log in on different IP devices.

So it is not easy to send the collected information to the users’ devices directly.

Therefore, it is decided to use the server platform as the data transfer station.

All the collected information is sent to the server for temporary storage through NB-IOT, and the user uses the upper computer to access the server to obtain the data.

2.6 Intelligent control interface

The intelligent control interface obtains the data from the central cloud-based platform and presents it to the user in the form of visualization.

Through the visual interface, the user can intuitively understand the location relationship between each node.

That can conveniently obtain the water level, temperature, humidity, well cover status, traffic flow and many other information from each node.

When there are abnormal conditions happen, such as blockage, rapid rise of water level, abnormal well cover status, the user can timely feedback the status and location information.

The central computer uses the API provided by Google Map system to display the position of the monitored area in the web page

Afterwards, each node will be marked on the map.

Using the Django architecture of Python language and HTML, JS and other languages, the data collected by each node is presented in the form of chart in the web page.

You can check the complete information by clicking the tag and see if there is any alarm occurs in time.

3. Final Analysis

The true value is unlocked through advanced analysis and data visualization. What you see on the dashboard is not just raw numbers but actionable insights presented in a clear, easy-to-understand format.

• Burglary alarm, use the network to inform municipal departments to solve the problem of missing water well covers in time.
• Loose alarm, eliminate the potential safety hazard caused by the damage of well cover to pedestrians.
• Pipeline blockage alarm, in the visual interface to display the blockage, to assist the cleaning department to clean up in time, eliminate hidden dangers, and prevent the occurrence of urban water logging.
• Detecting the ground temperature, water level, humidity, and vehicle flow, increasing the transmission frequency when abnormal happens.
• Sending alerts instead of simply showing data, including tampering alerts, environmental alerts, and maintenance alerts.
• Storing all the historical data, allowing for trend analysis and long-term planning.

4. Conclusion

Intelligent well covers are a valuable innovation for smart cities, significantly improving safety, efficiency, and data-driven urban management.

However, their widespread adoption faces hurdles in cost, power management, signal reliability, and system integration.

For success, cities must balance initial investment with long-term benefits, adopting scalable communication technologies, durable power solutions, and open IoT platforms to ensure reliable and cost-effective operation.

The use of specialized power sources like primary lithium batteries, HPC batteries, IoT batteries is the key enabling technology that makes these devices practical and reliable for smart city systems.