MAINTAINING INFORMATION INTEGRITY WHILE MINIMIZING NETWORK UTILIZATION OF ACCUMULATED DATA IN A DISTRIBUTED NETWORK

A method and systems for gathering information regarding usage of a resource from at least one of a plurality of measuring nodes operatively coupled to a controller, wherein the measuring node includes at least one sensor and a node processor operatively coupled to the sensor, and the controller includes a controller processor. The method includes predicting an estimated resource usage value associated with the at least one sensor with the node processor and separately with the controller each using a predictor algorithm and dataset. The method further includes measuring resource usage to which the estimated resource usage value applies with the sensor and calculating a difference between the estimated resource usage value and the measured resource usage with the node processor. If the difference falls outside of a bound the measured resource usage is communicated to the controller.