FROM CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
BY KIM PALMER
In another lake-related development, the Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA) spent the beginning of August installing several high-tech radio receivers on shoreline towers, rooftops and even on the mast of the William Mather ship docked at the Great Lakes Science Center. The goal: create a specialized wireless network of connectivity reaching 20 to 30 miles out over Lake Erie's open water.
The effort is part of a broader rollout of CWA's Smart Lake Erie Initiative, created to monitor freshwater data and provide that information to local users as well as to establish a testing lab for water technology businesses.
The project uses a new generation of low-cost, low-power devices that employ a telecommunications standard called LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) to communicate with sensors deployed to track toxic algal blooms, chemical spills and urban flooding.
