a safe bet – Water supply in northern Burgenland
Flexible SCADA system for the Wasserleitungsverband Nördliches Burgenland
Wasserleitungsverband Nördliches Burgenland (WLV NB) supplies 66 municipalities with drinking water. Water consumption in the supplied area has risen sharply over recent years, and the network and systems have been expanded accordingly. To ensure reliable, long-term operation, WLV NB required a flexible SCADA system that would also meet constantly increasing security requirements. WLV had been working with Bachmann’s atvise® for several years to monitor operating data. Over the course of the development, the existing SCADA component, including automation, also had to be integrated into atvise®.
Wasserleitungsverband (WLV) nördliches Burgenland
Water supply for around 180,000 people from groundwater and spring water
Rising water consumption
With an annual system feed-in of approx. 15 million cubic meters of water, and a total pipeline length of around 3,000 km, WLV NB is one of the largest suppliers of drinking water in Austria. Due to population growth and, not least, climate change, the pipeline network has been expanded to meet increasing demand for water. RHC automation introduced a new long-term database solution in 2018 to cope with the associated complexity. The system integrator selected atvise®, from Bachmann, as its interface: "Visualization with this web-based solution the employees responsible to view relevant operating data on any web-enabled device and in any browser," explains Roland Hirschmann, owner of RHC automation. With the introduction of atvise®, WLV NB can now identify pipe bursts and other anomalies with just a few clicks.
Step-by-step SCADA switch
This delivered a future-proof monitoring solution and long-term data archive. However, WLV NB’s outdated SCADA system could no
longer ensure reliable and NIScompliant operation in the future, especially as the OEM was no longer on the market. WLV NB was searching for a replacement. atvise® was already in use for operational data monitoring – so it made sense to consider this software for the new SCADA system, says Hirschmann, describing the considerations at the time. Moreover, he already had positive experience with atvise® as a SCADA solution with long-term database systems at other customers.
To give WLV NB an initial impression of the SCADA capabilities of atvise®, Hirschmann took a station that was connected to the existing control system via the IEC 104 protocol, and connected it in parallel to atvise®. "This was followed by a few more stations for building and barrier control. It quickly became clear to us: atvise® was the new SCADA system for WLV NB," recalls the owner of RHC automation.
About one hundred stations, featuring several thousand data points physically recorded in the field, will be gradually integrated into the new SCADA system by mid-2025. During the final stage, components will be connected to atvise® via IEC 104, OPC UA and Modbus.
Special feature: radio
Ninety percent of WLV NB's outstations are connected to the SCADA system via radio. "The flat Burgenland topology makes it possible to cover large areas with elevated radio systems," says Hirschmann, describing a special communication feature at WLV NB. In most cases, there are no cable connections between elevated tanks and pumping stations. At WLV NB, higher-level automation functions have to be carried out almost exclusively via the SCADA system.
Some scenarios were unavoidable during the changeover, such as when an elevated tank was still connected to the old system, while the associated pumping station was already implemented in the new system. In such cases, the current level of the elevated tank was fed into atvise® from the longterm database via OPC UA. This was to ensure continuous automation with minimal interruptions, and enabled pumps to be controlled automatically via the SCADA system. "Parallel operation like this is a great advantage because we don't have to change everything over simultaneously. If an outstation is replaced on the hardware side, it is pre-configured prior to delivery, so that operations are only interrupted for a very short time during commissioning," says Hirschmann.
Full overview
atvise® provides WLV NB with an extremely flexible monitoring and SCADA solution: thanks to web technology, internet services – such as Google Maps or weather data – can also be integrated with the operating data monitoring from atvise®, alongside camera images and other external data sources. "All nitrate measuring points in the supply area are mapped and integrated with Google Maps. By selecting station points on the map, the corresponding trend curves can be directly called up, with geographical correlations recorded at the same time," says the engineer. The web-based solution offers significantly more trend display functions than most desktop installations.
» Web-based atvise® enables the employees responsible to view relevant operating data on any web-enabled device in any browser. «
Key factor: security
As well as usability, there was a strong focus on the security of the new SCADA system – not least due to the NIS 2 directive, which defines strict cyber security requirements for critical infrastructure. Successful penetration and vulnerability tests confirm the implementation of comprehensive security measures in atvise®.
Due to security requirements, WLV NB uses two separate atvise® systems: Firstly, an IT-focused monitoring system for statistical data analysis from long-term archiving, and secondly, a strictly separate environment for operational technology processes, which serves as a SCADA system and is also connected to the long-term database.
The production data monitoring system is available to a large number of IT network users, whereby user authentication is carried out via an Active Directory-based single sign-on, with authorizations transferred automatically from Windows authentication on a group basis. The SCADA system in the OT network, on the other hand, can only be accessed via the control room workstation, or via strictly limited VPN access with two-factor authentication. In both systems, access authorization within the visualization can be further restricted on a user-specific basis – thanks to the finegrained access control provided by atvise®.
Communication between control center and outstations also takes place via VPN connections, which are superimposed on the radio transmission. Firewalls and intrusion detection systems provide additional operational security. In addition, atvise® has introduced and documented clear password guidelines for the SCADA system. For increased reliability, atvise® instances are installed redundantly on two physical servers. "We have established a solution that means WLV NB can look forward to future expansion with complete peace of mind," concludes the engineer.
Customer profile
System Integrator: RHC Automation
Industry: Water/Wastewater
Project(s): SCADA for water supply
Product: atvise® scada
PLC(s): Various
End customer: WLV nördl. Bgld.
