📡 Data & IoT

Prepaid Smart Water Metering (Agua Prepago)

EPM, Medellín's city-owned utility, sells water in advance through a proximity smart card read at a meter installed in the home, replacing monthly bills with pay-as-you-go balances. Launched commercially in 2015 after an 18-month pilot, it reached 30,538 connected households across Medellín by the end of 2024, still growing.

Live 📅 since 2015 ✔ Editor-reviewed

✔ Reviewed by the 1001 Smart Cities editorial desk · 🔎 Last verified 2026-07-30

📡 Data & IoT Water Sensors & IoT

📊 Impact

EPM added 1,614 new prepaid-water households in 2024 alone (161% of its internal target), bringing the cumulative total to 30,538 in Medellín — the utility's own reported adoption figures, not an independently audited outcome measure.

🎓 Lesson

A prepaid smart meter can extend formal water access to households with payment arrears or informal connections, but critics argue it also means service stops the moment the balance runs out — a tradeoff the adoption numbers alone don't settle.

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🏙️ City-wide

📖 Terms in this entry: Adaptive traffic signals · Digital twin · LoRaWAN

Sources

↗ EPM — Agua prepago (service page)Describes the smart-card recharge mechanism read via proximity at the household meter.

↗ EPM — "EPM 2024: Confianza, desarrollo y bienestar"Official 2024 figures: 1,614 new users (161% of goal), 30,538 cumulative connected households in Medellín.

↗ El Palpitar — "EPM presentó su nuevo servicio de Agua Prepago" (2015)Reports the June 2015 commercial launch after an 18-month, 300-household, nine-neighborhood pilot.

↗ Las2orillas — "Agua prepago: una política de EPM contra los pobres"Independent critique arguing the prepayment model risks cutting off water access for low-income households.

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Compare this project

🇨🇭 ewz Smart Meter Rollout on the City Fibre Network · Zürich Contrasting reasons to meter remotely: Zurich tracks consumption on a shared network, Medellín's prepaid card can also cut off supply. 🇨🇴 Metroplús Bus Rapid Transit & Fleet Telematics · Medellín Another verified project from Medellín. 🇨🇴 SIATA Early Warning Network · Medellín Another verified project from Medellín.

Explore the wider context

🚦 Asphalt or algorithms 💧 Water guide 🏙️ Medellín city profile 📡 Data & IoT projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Prepaid Smart Water Metering (Agua Prepago)” — Medellín, Colombia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/medellin-agua-prepago/ (last verified 2026-07-30). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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