What is SCADA?

SCADA stands for the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. This system basically collects the information from the various sensors installed at the factory or the remote locations. Then the whole of the collected data is sent to the common or central computer for the further processing and storage. This term is used to symbolize the control and management solutions in various small and large-scale industries such as Water management, Power sector, environment control and production units.

SCADA includes networks, controllers, softwares and the hardware, such as sensors, which will transmit and receive the signals. These sensors will collect the data from the site and send to the central system. The central system has the Remote Terminal Units (also called RTU's) working as its brain. RTU's are programmed to a particular set of logics and then they process the data according to that.

Human interference is allowed in the RTU's for changing the parameters or reprogramming. It is a real time system and will maintain the log of meter readings as well as the various changes in the status of the sensors. For the human interference SCADA has the Human Machine Interface (HMI). This is where the whole data that has been processed can be viewed by the human. If one is to make any changes then those changes are also made at this end through the use of programmable logic controllers. These HMI's are linked to the databases from where HMI's will collect data and then present to the human controllers in the form of graphs or tables.

These systems are extremely useful on small scale such as weather management as well as for the large-scale industries such as nuclear plants. These systems are easily available in the market and can be customized according to the requirements at a very affordable cost.

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