Remotely Controlled Continuous Surveillance of Viral RNA in Wastewater Using a LoRa Network

Area of Science:

• Environmental microbiology
• Public health surveillance
• Molecular diagnostics

Background:

• Traditional infectious disease tracking faces challenges with asymptomatic carriers and outbreak management.
• Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a promising approach for community health monitoring.
• Current methods often lack real-time data and decentralized capabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a scalable, networked molecular testing framework for wastewater-based epidemiology.
• To integrate portable nucleic acid testing (NAT) with long-range wireless communication and cloud analytics.
• To enable unattended, real-time monitoring of infectious disease markers in wastewater.

Main Methods:

• Development of battery-powered nodes performing on-site Reverse Transcription - Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (RT-LAMP) for SARS-CoV-2 detection.
• Integration of nodes with long-range (LoRa) wireless communication for data transmission to a gateway.
• Cloud-based data management using a NoSQL database and an interactive dashboard for spatiotemporal visualization and hotspot identification.

Main Results:

• The system successfully performed on-site RT-LAMP tests directly on raw wastewater samples.
• Long-range wireless communication achieved a packet delivery ratio exceeding 99% in testing.
• The interactive dashboard provided real-time and historical data visualization, including 7-day positivity rates and hotspot mapping.

Conclusions:

• The integrated framework advances decentralized wastewater surveillance beyond traditional laboratory workflows.
• IoT-enabled molecular testing provides timely, actionable insights for public health officials.
• This system supports unattended, long-term monitoring for effective infectious disease tracking.