Overview
Sadeem is an intelligent IoT system that provides real-time drainage network monitoring. Its real-time sensors continuously monitor water levels and manhole cover status to catch potential flooding or abnormal conditions early. When risk is detected, Sadeem sends instant alerts via SMS or email, giving cities the chance to act before a situation turns into a crisis.
The platform is already deployed in Al-Madinah, Jeddah, Makkah, and other Saudi cities and supports both cloud-based and on-premise deployments for municipalities and large enterprise clients.
Technologies Used
Technologies Used- Node.js
- Go
- Kubernetes
- PostgreSQL
- TimeScaleDB
App Links
Category
- IoT
- Flood Detection
- Smart Cities
- Real-Time Monitoring
- Infrastructure Resilience
Platforms
- Web
- iOS
Timeline
2022
Ongoing Partnership
Initial Requirements
Climate change and rapid urbanization have left cities more exposed to flooding, infrastructure strain, and safety risk. Municipalities across different countries needed a smart, reliable, secure flood monitoring system to strengthen infrastructure resilience and protect their communities.
Sadeem set out to build exactly that: a scalable IoT platform, powered by sensors, capable of monitoring thousands of locations at once and sending actionable alerts to decision-makers. To bring that vision to life, they partnered with Blink22 to design and build a platform ready for large-scale urban deployment and held to strict security and performance standards.
Challenge
Building a reliable and scalable IoT platform for critical infrastructure came with unique engineering challenges:
Power & communication limits: Sensors had limited battery life and narrow communication protocols (MQTT-focused), requiring a backend optimized for low-power, long-term field operation.
Static IP dependency: Sensors could not resolve DNS records, meaning network architecture had to support fixed addressing to avoid costly on-site reconfiguration if IPs changed.
Deployment flexibility: High-profile government and enterprise clients demanded on-premise hosting, requiring infrastructure-agnostic deployment strategies and bulletproof resilience.
Enterprise-grade testing: Sadeem had to pass rigorous performance, load, and cybersecurity audits by government and enterprise partners.
Scalability & reliability: The system had to handle thousands of concurrent data streams while holding onto accuracy and uptime, key requirements for any credible IoT solutions provider working in critical infrastructure
Approach
Blink22 approached Sadeem’s challenges with deep IoT expertise and an iterative, performance-driven development process:
Optimized communication stack: We tested and benchmarked multiple MQTT brokers (HMQ and EMQX) to find the most reliable and scalable channel for sensor-to-backend communication.
Cloud-native & on-premise readiness: We designed infrastructure around Kubernetes for auto-scaling while ensuring deployments could run securely on clients’ own servers when required.
Data-driven design: Built a robust data pipeline for sensor ingestion, real-time event processing, and actionable alerts, while supporting long-term historical analysis.
Security-first architecture: Implemented oAuth for API authentication and HMAC webhook authentication and authorization and encryption models to meet local regulatory requirements.
Continuous collaboration: Worked closely with Sadeem’s product and field teams to adapt to real-world constraints, from network variability to battery optimization.
Solution
We delivered a scalable IoT platform powering Sadeem’s vision of safer smart cities:
Backend Infrastructure:
Event-driven architecture built with Go and Node.js to process massive sensor data streams reliably.
Secure APIs to integrate with third-party visualization and control platforms.
Web Platform:
Real-time dashboards with interactive maps, live sensor health, and historical analytics for city operators.
Tools for configuring alerts, analyzing water level trends, and managing thousands of devices.
Mobile App:
A mobile-friendly interface providing on-the-go access to sensor statuses and quick command controls for field technicians.
Deployment Flexibility:
Kubernetes-powered scaling for cloud clients and fully documented on-premise installation for municipalities and enterprise customers.
Outcome
With Blink22’s technical partnership, Sadeem evolved into one of Saudi Arabia’s leading IoT flood monitoring platforms:
Deployed in multiple major Saudi cities, including Al-Madinah, Jeddah, and Makkah, supporting urban safety and infrastructure planning.
Expanded to 2,000+ active sensors in the field, with infrastructure ready to scale to 15,000+ sensors to support national smart city initiatives.
Successfully passed performance, load, and cybersecurity audits by high-profile government and enterprise clients, proving its resilience and reliability.
Delivered a future-proof platform, able to operate both in the cloud and on private infrastructure, unlocking new adoption opportunities.