[darkane]

I would say any system whose failure quickly results in the loss of life should always have properly trained staff either on location or trivially close. Anything less than that would be, as you put it, criminally irresponsible, as is the idea of connecting such infrastructure to publicly accessible networks.

[eigenvector]

I don't think you'd like what your power bill would look like if your distribution company had to have staff trivially close to all of its infrastructure, 24/7. I work at a utility and all (yes, all) of our stations and substations are unmanned.

To have a crew on site at every station, 24/7, you'd be looking at nearly 1,000 employees at $65-90k, assuming 8-hour shifts.

[droithomme]

It's almost like you're saying no one has now or ever built an affordable water supply system that can supply water unless it is run remotely through the internet.

Pretty sure that's not the case since internet controlled systems are solidly in the minority.