School Water Monitoring Systems for Immediate Response and Safety

Persistent Water Quality Issues in Schools

Across the country, elementary, middle, and high schools continue to face recurring problems of rusty and turbid water, raising serious concerns among students and parents. At one elementary school in Seoul, rusty water was found in drinking fountains due to aging pipelines, forcing students to bring bottled water from home or teachers to install temporary purifiers (Chosun Ilbo, May 13, 2024). In Gyeonggi Province, turbidity levels surged to dozens of times above the acceptable limit immediately after pipe cleaning, causing the suspension of water use (OBS, Jan 6, 2023). A boarding high school in Busan even experienced rusty water from both drinking fountains and showers, forcing students to temporarily leave the dormitory (Kukje Newspaper, May 19, 2025).

Despite these incidents, most schools still rely on quarterly inspections or post-incident tests. These cases all point to the same truth:

Water quality management that depends on reactive measures after contamination is no longer sufficient. What’s urgently needed is a monitoring system capable of early detection and immediate response.

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Why Turbidity? A Practical Starting Point for Early Detection

Turbidity represents the concentration of suspended particles in water, but its meaning goes far beyond “water clarity.” It is often the first parameter to react when issues such as filter degradation, sediment detachment, or external contamination occur.

The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies turbidity as an early-warning indicator for detecting problems within a multi-barrier approach to safe drinking water (WHO, Review of Turbidity, 2017, p.10). WHO recommends keeping turbidity below 5 NTU for potable water, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires less than 0.3 NTU for filtered drinking water. The EPA also notes that increasing turbidity can lead to reduced disinfection efficiency and greater risk of pathogenic microorganisms.

In this sense, turbidity is not merely a “result indicator,” but a signal that reveals the onset of water quality deterioration — the most practical and sensitive starting point for proactive monitoring.

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Real-Time Monitoring: Lightweight Systems Fit for Schools

School water distribution networks have simple structures and clearly defined zones, making them ideal for lightweight real-time monitoring systems that integrate small sensors, data communication, and a cloud-based analysis platform. The turbidity data collected by sensors are transmitted to a central system that automatically detects deviations from normal patterns. Any anomaly is immediately sent as an alert to the administrator, minimizing response time.

Such a system enables 24-hour autonomous water safety monitoring, even without on-site staff, and provides the data foundation for rapid cause tracing and preventive maintenance.

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From Schools to Cities: A Scalable Framework

A real-time monitoring model proven in schools can be extended to larger water networks in buildings, hospitals, campuses, industrial parks, and urban water systems. Additional parameters such as pH, residual chlorine, and electrical conductivity can be integrated for comprehensive monitoring across multiple sites.

Schools can thus serve as living labs for water security systems, verifying both data reliability and operational efficiency, and providing a practical foundation for future city-wide water safety networks.

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Turbidity: The Starting Point of Preventive Monitoring

Turbidity may not answer every question about water quality, but it is the first signal to reveal when a problem begins.The essence of water safety lies not merely in whether contamination occurs, but in detecting the moment that change starts.

Digitalizing school water management is more than a technical trial — it marks a transformative shift from reactive responses to proactive monitoring across essential public infrastructure.

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Reference: 1.WHO, Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality, 4th ed.

2.WHO, Review of Turbidity: Information for Regulators and Water Suppliers, WHO/FWC/WSH/17.01, 2017

3.EPA, Turbidity Parameter Factsheet, 2021

4.Huey & Meyer, Turbidity as an Indicator of Water Quality, Water, 2010

5.De Roos et al., Turbidity and GI Illness, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2017

6.Badger Meter, Remote Water Quality Monitoring for Distribution Networks, 2022

7.McDowell et al., Monitoring Water Quality to Meet Policy Objectives, Scientific Reports, 2024