Amongst other things I have been involved with other the past years something hopefully useful is sharing ideas between countries. An earlier post shared 'lockable meters' from the Caribbean, also coming across them in the Philippines, which can be used as 'analogue pre-paid meters' without all the challenges of pre-paid electronics.
Another point I've been sharing is the use of wall-mounted meter boxes - such that a meter reader does not have to enter a walled/gated compound in order to read the meters but so that meters and pipework are not left exposed on an outside wall - susceptible to theft and vandalism. I once watched a diligent meter reader in Maputo trying to access a compound to read the meter whilst being barked at by dogs in the compound and with no householder coming to let him in.
Now that AMR meters are available perhaps that is the solution. But again, the electronics may make them more expensive and/or less resilient.
Sharing the ideas of meter boxes recently, both in Freetown and Bhubaneswar, I realised I didn't have any good photos of such boxes in use ... and the internet was surprisingly unhelpful.
Pleased therefore to come across these examples, from Lisbon, Portugal (the first two, the first clearly an 'old' model) and Seville, Spain (both courtesy of a recent holiday) ..... again something so normal in some settings, almost revolutionary in cities where they have never been used!
and a close up of that one, with a nice image of a tap to remind that it is different from the adjoining gas and electricity boxes:
And a final one to demonstrate just how common they are in this particular setting
