Sponsored by
Hello readers!
This week, we’re looking at the EU’s plans for rolling out water sensors across the continent, livestock tracking, smarter cities, and more!
Water Is Running Out. Is IoT the Fix?
Last week, the European Commission launched a formal consultation on a Digital Action Plan for the EU water sector — a flagship initiative under the European Water Resilience Strategy that explicitly calls for large-scale IoT deployment, including smart sensors and connected meters, across water utilities continent-wide. The numbers driving the initiative are sobering. By 2030, global water demand is projected to outstrip available supply by 40%. Europe's aging water infrastructure loses enormous volumes to leaks that go undetected for weeks or months, and manual meter-reading systems that were outdated a decade ago are still the norm in many municipalities. The Commission estimates that smart meters alone can reduce water use by up to 25%, with leak detection shaving another 7–14% off consumption. Those aren't incremental improvements — they're the kind of efficiency gains that would take decades to achieve through infrastructure construction alone.
What makes this significant for the IoT industry is less the policy itself and more what it signals about where IoT is heading in critical infrastructure. Water has lagged behind energy and transportation in connected-device adoption, partly because the business case was harder to make at small scale and partly because water utilities operate under different regulatory and funding pressures than, say, smart grid operators. The EU consultation essentially closes that argument. It names IoT as a strategic tool for managing a resource under genuine physical stress, which is different from adopting connected devices as an efficiency play. When scarcity becomes the framing, the ROI calculus changes, and investment follows. The consultation is open to utilities, agriculture, energy operators, and data center operators — a broad coalition that reflects just how many sectors depend on water infrastructure staying functional.
The technology required isn't speculative. IoT-based water management is already running in large commercial properties — hotels, resorts, industrial campuses — where operators have deployed connected sensors across pools, cooling towers, and irrigation systems to get real-time readings on flow rates, pressure, and quality. The IFA archive on smart water metering details the core architecture: LPWAN connectivity (typically LoRaWAN or NB-IoT for their range and battery efficiency), flow and pressure sensors, and a cloud or edge platform that surfaces anomalies to operators before they become failures. Leak detection that once required a physical inspection now triggers an alert the moment pressure drops unexpectedly in a pipe segment. The gap between what's technically possible and what's actually deployed at municipal scale has been primarily a funding and prioritization problem — not an engineering one.
Wastewater tells a similar story. IoT sensors in treatment facilities can monitor chemical concentrations, flag bacterial risks like legionella, and track regulatory compliance in real time — tasks that traditionally fell to staff making manual checks on scheduled rounds. Connecting those sensors to a platform doesn't just reduce labor; it compresses response time for events where hours matter. The Flint water crisis is the extreme case, but the underlying issue — delayed detection of contamination because monitoring was infrequent and manual — is common in underfunded municipal systems across the world. IoT doesn't eliminate the risk, but it dramatically shortens the window between an anomaly occurring and someone acting on it. That's the operational argument. The EU's framing adds a resource-scarcity argument on top: this infrastructure isn't just about efficiency, it's about whether water systems can remain reliable as demand grows and climate variability increases.
For IoT practitioners, the EU initiative is worth watching closely regardless of whether you work in water. What's happening is a pattern that has played out in energy, logistics, and manufacturing: a combination of regulatory pressure, resource constraints, and demonstrated ROI tips a sector from early adoption to mainstream deployment. The consultation closes June 24th, and the action plan that follows will shape procurement requirements for water utilities across 27 member states — a significant pull for connected device vendors, platform providers, and system integrators. If you're building in the utilities space or looking for sectors where IoT investment is about to accelerate, water is moving from a niche vertical to a policy priority, and that transition tends to happen faster than most people expect.
📖 Top Articles
Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have gradually been adopted in various industries due to their real benefits. The most significant ones would be the real-time insights and data-driven decisions. Livestock management, among numerous industries, gradually becomes a field where IoT integration works as a powerful force. By 2029, the global IoT deployment in livestock industry is expected to grow rapidly, with a total market value reaching USD 11.18 billion, representing a growth of 12.1% from 2022 to 2029.
By 2050, nearly 7 in 10 people will live in urban areas, leading to billions more deliveries, commuters, and vehicles using infrastructure not designed for such congestion. Cities cannot expand fast enough to meet this demand. Instead, they must optimize every lane, charger, signal, and minute of movement. That’s where intelligent mobility comes in.
Hybrid work has changed how teams operate. Employees bounce between focused work and collaboration throughout the day, but some workplaces still assume everyone needs the same workspace setup at all times. Sensor data shows you what's actually happening in your space so you can build environments that match how people work most effectively.
Cap table management that puts your business first
Managing your cap table doesn’t have to be complex. Pulley simplifies equity management for Founders and CFOs with intuitive workflows, accurate, audit-ready reporting, and predictable pricing—so you can plan and scale without surprises. Onboard in days, not weeks, and rely on responsive, expert support every step of the way.
From issuing grants to 409A valuations or ASC 718 reporting, Pulley gives you the clarity to manage equity, make decisions, and get back to work. Experience a platform built for business owners and finance teams: transparent, reliable, and designed to put your company first.
🔥 Rapid Fire
🎙 The IoT For All Podcast
In this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Matthias Wagner, Founder and CEO of Flux, joins Ryan Chacon to discuss AI-assisted hardware design for IoT. The conversation covers the historical challenges of hardware design, the current capabilities of AI tools, compressing the hardware iteration cycle, integration challenges, the limitations of AI, and enabling IoT innovation.
✅ Partner Spotlight
The ioXt Alliance, the global standard for IoT security, is a group of manufacturers, industry alliances, and government organizations dedicated to harmonizing best security practices and establishing testable standards that give retailers and consumers product confidence in a highly connected world.
Interested in becoming an IoT For All Partner? Reach out here!
📅 Events & Webinars
Hosted by Kigen
The initial SGP.32 specifications were released in May 2023 by the GSMA, and the final version has been stable since June 2024. That’s plenty of time to see SGP.32-ready devices flooding the market, but where are these devices? Why don’t we see them everywhere yet? Is something still holding the industry back?
