Industrial IoT, water & mining glossary.
Plain-English definitions of the terms South African operators meet on an IIoT, water or mining project — without the jargon. Each term links to a deeper guide where we have one.
IoT & Industry 4.0 fundamentals
Internet of Things (IoT)
The network of physical objects — devices, sensors, meters, machines — connected to the internet so they can report data and be monitored or controlled remotely. In industry it underpins condition monitoring, metering and automation. See what IoT means and how it works. Learn more →
IoT device
Any physical object with sensing, processing and connectivity that sends data to (or receives commands from) an IoT platform — a smart meter, a sensor-equipped gateway, a tracker. The building block of an IoT solution. Learn more →
IoT sensor
A sensor that measures a physical quantity — flow, pressure, vibration, temperature, level, gas — and feeds it into an IoT system. IoT sensors are the source of every reading on the dashboard. Learn more →
Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR / Industry 4.0)
The current wave of industrial change built on cyber-physical systems — IoT, automation, AI, cloud and data — that connect and optimise operations. The pragmatic SA path is decision-led monitoring wins, not big-bang transformation. Learn more →
Industrial automation
The use of control systems — PLCs, drives, robotics — to run machines and processes with minimal human intervention. IoT sits alongside automation, reading its data for visibility without replacing the controls. Learn more →
Grafana
A widely used open-source tool for visualising time-series data in live dashboards and raising alerts — popular for industrial IoT performance monitoring. addaNet exposes data so teams can use Grafana if they prefer it. Learn more →
Security protocols
The standards that encrypt and authenticate IoT data at each hop — TLS for transport, OPC-UA security for machine data, AES-128 on low-power radio — so a connected plant exposes data without exposing control. Learn more →
Industrial IoT & connectivity
Industrial IoT (IIoT)
The use of connected sensors, edge devices and software to bring industrial equipment — machines, meters, instruments — online for monitoring, analysis and action. The foundation of digital transformation in manufacturing, water and mining. Learn more →
Digital transformation
The shift from running on gut feel and lagging paperwork to running on live, trusted data. In practice, a sequence of small, proven monitoring wins that compound — not a single big-bang platform project. Learn more →
Edge computing
Processing data on a device at the site (the edge gateway) rather than in the cloud. Enables real-time response and keeps logging and alerting through load shedding and dropped connections. Learn more →
Edge buffering (store-and-forward)
An edge device storing readings locally when connectivity is lost and uploading them when it returns, so an outage causes a delay, never a gap in the data. Learn more →
SCADA
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition — an on-site system that supervises and controls a process in real time. Distinct from an IoT platform, which adds visibility and analytics across sites; the two usually work together. Learn more →
PLC
Programmable Logic Controller — the industrial computer that controls a machine or process. An IoT platform reads data from PLCs (often without replacing them) to provide visibility. Learn more →
OPC-UA
A modern, secure, vendor-neutral industrial protocol carrying structured, self-describing data — ideal for getting meaningful information out of modern PLCs and between systems. Learn more →
Modbus
A simple, near-universal industrial protocol for reading registers off PLCs, meters and sensors — especially older equipment. Minimal and ubiquitous, with no built-in security. Learn more →
MQTT
A lightweight publish/subscribe messaging protocol built to ship data efficiently over unreliable or low-bandwidth networks to a platform — well suited to remote IoT and South African connectivity. Learn more →
LoRaWAN
A long-range, low-power wireless network for small amounts of data over kilometres on battery — ideal for remote, distributed sensing such as water and agriculture. Learn more →
NB-IoT
Narrowband IoT — a low-power cellular technology for small, infrequent data with good coverage, run by mobile operators. A common choice for metering and remote monitoring. Learn more →
Sigfox
An ultra-low-power, low-data wide-area network technology used for simple, infrequent IoT messages. One of several connectivity options to weigh per site. Learn more →
OT security
Securing operational technology when connecting it to IoT — read-only edge access, no exposed PLC ports, network segmentation and encryption, so you expose data without exposing control. Learn more →
Manufacturing & asset health
OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)
A standard measure of manufacturing productivity combining availability, performance and quality. Can be measured even on old lines without replacing the PLC. Learn more →
Condition monitoring
Continuously watching an asset's health signals — vibration, temperature, current — to detect a developing fault before it causes failure. Learn more →
Predictive maintenance
Using live condition data to intervene exactly when an asset needs it — catching faults weeks ahead — instead of running to failure (reactive) or servicing on a fixed calendar (preventive). Learn more →
Vibration analysis
Reading the vibration signature of rotating equipment to detect bearing, imbalance, misalignment and looseness faults long before failure — the workhorse of condition monitoring. Learn more →
Water
Non-revenue water (NRW)
Water a utility produces but earns no revenue from — lost to leaks, illegal connections, faulty meters and unbilled use. A major, costly problem for South African municipalities. Learn more →
District metering area (DMA)
A defined zone of a water network whose inflow is metered, so water entering can be balanced against water billed — localising leakage zone by zone. Learn more →
Minimum night flow
The lowest flow into a zone, in the early hours when legitimate demand is near zero. Whatever still flows is mostly leakage — the most powerful leak indicator a utility has. Learn more →
Pressure management
Monitoring and reducing network pressure to the minimum that meets service — cutting both background leakage and pipe bursts, with a disproportionate effect because the relationship is non-linear. Learn more →
DWS
The South African Department of Water and Sanitation — the regulator for water use and effluent discharge, whose licence conditions drive much water-quality monitoring. Learn more →
Green Drop / Blue Drop
DWS performance programmes assessing wastewater treatment works (Green Drop) and drinking-water systems (Blue Drop) in South Africa, putting municipal water performance in the spotlight. Learn more →
Effluent
Wastewater discharged from a process or treatment works. Its quality must be monitored and reported against a water-use licence. Learn more →
COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand)
A measure of the organic pollutant load in water — a central parameter for effluent compliance and wastewater-treatment performance. Learn more →
Turbidity
The cloudiness of water from suspended particles — a key drinking-water safety and treatment indicator, and a common discharge parameter. Learn more →
Dissolved oxygen (DO)
The oxygen available in water — the heartbeat of biological wastewater treatment (too low and treatment fails) and a measure of river health. Learn more →
WWTW
Wastewater Treatment Works — the plant that treats sewage before discharge. Real-time monitoring keeps it running and compliant between samples. Learn more →
Water treatment
The multi-stage process of making raw water safe to drink (or effluent safe to discharge) — screening, coagulation, settling, filtration and disinfection. Each stage has parameters worth monitoring continuously rather than spot-sampling. Learn more →
Water treatment chemicals (chemical dosing)
The reagents added during treatment — coagulants, flocculants, lime for pH correction, and chlorine for disinfection. Monitoring dosing rates and chemical stock levels controls cost and prevents over- or under-dosing. Learn more →
Water sensors
The in-line probes and instruments that measure water — flow, pressure, level, pH, turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, COD and chlorine — feeding continuous water quality monitoring instead of periodic grab samples. Learn more →
SANS 241
South Africa's national drinking-water quality standard, defining the limits a supply must meet to be safe. Continuous monitoring flags a drift toward a SANS 241 breach before unsafe water reaches consumers. Learn more →
Mining & safety
MHSA
The Mine Health and Safety Act — South Africa's mining safety legislation, including collision-prevention (8.10.1) and person-location (16.7) requirements. Learn more →
TMM (Trackless Mobile Machinery)
Mobile mining machines (LHDs, dump trucks, utility vehicles) that aren't rail-bound — the focus of MHSA collision-prevention requirements. Learn more →
EMESRT Level 9
The intervention level of the EMESRT control hierarchy: a collision-prevention system must detect, warn and automatically intervene (slow and brake the machine), not merely alarm. Learn more →
Proximity Detection System (PDS)
The system on a mine vehicle that senses nearby people and machines and triggers warning and intervention — built from radar, UWB, RFID, LiDAR or a fusion of these. Learn more →
Person location / missing person locator
A system giving each underground worker an intrinsically safe device for last-known-location, so people can be accounted for and rescue directed in an emergency (MHSA 16.7). Learn more →
Occupational hygiene
Monitoring and managing the workplace health hazards — dust, gas, DPM, noise and heat — that cause harm over time, increasingly done in real time. Learn more →
DPM (Diesel Particulate Matter)
Fine soot from diesel equipment, a regulated carcinogen of particular concern in confined underground spaces. Learn more →
Ventilation-on-demand (VOD)
Matching underground airflow to where people and machines actually are, instead of ventilating the whole mine flat-out — cutting a major energy cost while maintaining safe air. Learn more →
Tailings / TSF
Tailings are the waste left after extracting minerals; a Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) stores them behind a dam whose stability must be monitored. Learn more →
GISTM
The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, created after the 2019 Brumadinho disaster, raising expectations for tailings-dam monitoring, traceability and escalation. Learn more →
Piezometer
An instrument measuring pore water pressure inside a dam or embankment — a primary stability indicator in tailings-dam monitoring. Learn more →
Monitoring & compliance
Remote monitoring
Watching equipment or a site from a distance over a network, instead of a person being present — boreholes, reservoirs, remote plant — often solar-powered and buffered to survive load shedding. Learn more →
Environmental monitoring
Continuously measuring environmental parameters — water and effluent quality, air, dust, gas, noise — to understand impact and protect people and ecosystems. The basis of environmental assessment and reporting. Learn more →
Compliance monitoring
Monitoring specifically against a legal or licence limit — a DWS discharge condition, an air-quality licence, an MHSA exposure threshold — with alerts on breach and regulator-ready reports. Learn more →
Performance monitoring
Tracking how well an asset, line or process performs against target over time — availability, throughput, efficiency — turning live data into a trend you can act on. Learn more →
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E)
A programme discipline: monitoring tracks what is happening; evaluation judges whether it is achieving the intended outcome. Continuous IoT data makes both faster and more objective. Learn more →
Healthcare & retirement living
RTLS (Real-Time Location System)
A system that reports where tagged people or equipment are inside a building, in near real time. Also sold as an indoor positioning system. Almost nobody buying one searches for the acronym — facilities look for nurse call, staff safety or equipment location. Learn more →
UWB (Ultra-Wideband)
A radio technique that fixes position by timing how long a pulse takes to travel between a tag and a fixed reference point — a physical measurement, unlike Bluetooth and Wi-Fi methods that infer distance from signal strength. Manufacturer accuracy figures assume line of sight. Learn more →
Line of sight (LOS)
An unobstructed path between a tag and a reference point. Every published positioning accuracy figure assumes it; walls, trolleys and people degrade it, which is why the honest design target indoors is room and door certainty rather than centimetres. Learn more →
Reference point (anchor)
The fixed unit, mounted on a ceiling or wall, that a tag is located against. Cabled units take Power over Ethernet; battery units with multi-year cells make occupied and heritage buildings feasible without cabling. Learn more →
Nurse call system
The summoning layer in a ward or care home — call points at beds and bathrooms wired to a panel. It knows the room a button sits in; it does not know who responded, whether they arrived, or how long the person waited. Learn more →
Call-to-arrival time
The interval between a call being raised and a staff member actually being present. A traditional call system cannot measure it, because cancelling a light at the wall is not the same event as attending. Learn more →
Staff duress
A wearable alarm that lets a worker summon help from where they are rather than from where a fixed button is, carrying their location with the alarm. A direct response to the employer duty in section 8 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Learn more →
Wander management
Protecting a resident at risk of leaving unaccompanied by monitoring boundaries — external doors, lifts, gates — rather than monitoring the person inside their own home. A safety control that raises an alarm, not a restraint. Learn more →
Residential facility
Under the Older Persons Act, accommodation where older persons are housed and cared for. It may not be operated unless registered, and its operator reports annually to the Minister on service standards and measures against abuse. Learn more →
Frail care
Twenty-four hour care for an older person who needs it, typically a unit within a retirement village or a standalone facility. Learn more →
POPIA
The Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013. Its definition of personal information expressly includes location information, so any system that reports where an identified person is processes personal information from day one. Learn more →
Special personal information
Categories POPIA prohibits processing by default, including health. Section 32 permits healthcare institutions and facilities to process it where necessary for treatment and care, or for the administration of the institution, subject to confidentiality. Learn more →
Ingress protection (IP rating)
The two-digit rating for how well an enclosure resists dust and water. It decides whether a wearable can be wiped down with the disinfectant an infection prevention programme specifies — a tag that cannot be cleaned will not be worn. Learn more →
South African context
Load shedding
Scheduled rolling power cuts in South Africa. The reason IoT here must buffer at the edge and, for remote sites, run on solar — so monitoring keeps recording through outages. Learn more →
Telemetry
The automatic measurement and wireless transmission of data from remote or inaccessible points — boreholes, reservoirs, dams — to a central platform. Learn more →
addaNet
addanode's in-house Industrial IoT platform — connecting sensors, instruments and PLCs into one live dashboard with alerts, reports and APIs, engineered for South African conditions. Learn more →
Cut through the jargon with us.
Not sure which of these you actually need? Tell us the problem in plain terms — we'll translate it into the smallest project that solves it.