Dam that social networking: connecting South Africa's major dams to social media

Abstract

South Africa is a semi-arid country and water resources need to be monitored. The Internet of Things is the phenomenon of more and more things (as opposed to people and services) becoming connected to the Internet. This paper describes a project where four major South African dams are connected to Twitter and Facebook (and other social media such as MXit and Google Chat) in a mechanism which would be easy to replicate for additional dams or rivers. Data is supplied by the South African Department of Water Affairs. Beachcomber (a Mobicents based JEE application) routes the data to appropriate service building blocks and resource adaptors to ensure that the information is widely disseminated.