‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’ is a new conference on the IWA calendar, taking place on 24-25 September in London, UK. Organised by IWA Conferences Ltd, this event will bring together global leaders in the water sector to explore the latest innovations and strategies for building resilient, sustainable water utilities, with a particular focus on opportunities for technology, digital transformation, and regulatory compliance.

“The technological opportunities for digital water are exploding but there are still challenges in taking them from research and practice through to implementation,” says Janelcy Alferes, who is R&D project leader monitoring technology and digital water, WaterKlimaatHub – VITO, Belgium, and Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA). “This conference will be a great platform to discuss this.”

Facilitating the digital transformation

IWA is playing an important role in this, and Water Horizons 2025 is the latest part of the Association’s drive to help water practitioners grasp the very best that digital technologies can offer to deliver sustainable, smart, efficient water systems.

“IWA is already doing a lot to facilitate this,” says Alferes. “They really recognise the value of digital solutions and how they can support many aspects of water management.” She references IWA’s impressive Digital Programme, the three editions of IWA Digital Water Summits in Bilbao, Spain, and IWA’s Specialist Groups that are promoting the use of digital solutions. She says: “There is a lot of support for really pushing the idea of finding digital solutions to improve our water systems. And there is increasing interest in finding synergies between different Specialist Groups.” As Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on ICA, she is very conscious of the potential for IWA’s membership to come together to develop opportunities and enhance the role and power of existing and emerging technologies.

Advanced technologies

Focusing on how water utilities can future-proof their services while advancing their climate and carbon goals, Water Horizons 2025 will open with the theme of ‘Technology opportunities, digital transformation, and the regulatory horizon’. This first day of the two-day programme will explore how utilities are embracing advanced technologies – from AI and IoT to smart water networks and digital twins – to drive operational efficiency, compliance, and system resilience. The second day will build on the theme of day one, focusing on ‘Building resilient water systems and advancing net zero solutions’ shifting the focus to implementation and how utilities can apply innovation to reduce emissions and build low-carbon, circular water systems.

Alferes explains that she sees Water Horizons 2025 as an opportunity to look at the new technologies that are currently available and focus on how they can be used most effectively to improve water systems and the management of water resources in applications across drinking water, wastewater and industrial processes. “It’s about how to make use of the technology,” she explains. “I’ll cover different aspects ranging from sensors to digital twins to support tools and how to bring those tools forward to help support decision-making.”

Stakeholder engagement

Alferes also highlights the importance of collaboration between stakeholders and the need to avoid looking at water in isolation. She says: “If we are to face the challenges that we have today and those that we will have tomorrow, we really need to consider water as a part of our ecosystems, and to consider the important links between water and energy, food and agriculture. We can’t just consider water in a silo. We need to collaborate with the different stakeholders – with the water utilities, the technology providers, researchers, and the community and municipalities. It is important to take into account the different parts of the puzzle.”

Alferes says that there are still gaps that need to be bridged to enable digital water to be as effective as it can be and much of that is to do with taking research from theory into practice and facilitating cross-sector collaboration and learning. “There are still some gaps that need to be bridged,” she says. “We need efforts to be made in different directions, but I think that we are going along the right track. My interest is in helping to bridge these gaps and enabling research and innovation to be applicable in practice.”

Water Horizons 2025 provides the ideal opportunity whether you are starting out on your net zero journey or looking to network and share experiences with others building resilience into their systems to future-proof a water sector facing the challenges of climate change, urbanisation, and increasing population and consumption. The challenges may be great, but if we work smarter the rewards will be too. Join us at ‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’ to be part of this transformation.

More information

Visit https://www.waterhorizonsevents.org/home?event-key=wh2025 to find out more about ‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’.

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Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, PrimeWater has been a game changing project. Its aim is to develop Earth Observation (EO) products that are tailored to enhance user experience and find solutions that seamlessly support day-to-day activities across broad needs.

A project with global reach

The three-year project, now complete, was successfully guided by an international consortium of partners, bringing together a team of research organisations, SMEs, water associations, private enterprises and public water authorities from Europe, the USA and Australia. The consortium drew from a wide spectrum of expertise, embracing EO science and technology, water science, information and communications technology, modelling, integrated water resources management, social sciences, consultation, and systems for circulating and sharing information with end users.

IWA became a key partner in the PrimeWater project in December 2019. As a leading global water association with an extensive network of water professionals, utilities, and policymakers, IWA has played a vital role in facilitating communication and knowledge exchange among the project’s participants. It has taken a lead in communication and dissemination activities, assisting in the identification of end user needs, and supporting efforts to reach new markets through the establishment of a Community of Practice (CoP).

Expanding on advanced EO data products, integrated with additional data sources and diagnostic modelling tools, PrimeWater generated information on the effects of upstream changes on future water quality and quantity, to inform public and private sector decision-making with regards to situational intelligence, enhanced predictive and early warning capabilities, and the adaptive management of water resources.

Four full-scale international case studies were undertaken, located in Europe, the USA, and Australia. These case studies were developed to challenge the transferability of PrimeWater applications in diverse water catchment systems and sectors. Each case study approached a different aspect of water circle management, including water resources management, environmental protection, and potable water supplies, with a focus on the adaptability and functionality of EO for each user’s requirements.

PrimeWater’s Operational Platform

Over the course of the project, the consortium produced a plethora of impressive results, most notably the PrimeWater Operational Platform. This platform has numerous uses and benefits, and is designed to empower decision-makers with real-time data and insights to support sustainable water management and increase resilience.

Preserving water quality is crucial for safeguarding human health and maintaining the integrity of aquatic ecosystems. PrimeWater’s platform excels in water quality monitoring, enabling the detection of pollution sources and the assessment of water quality trends. The platform’s ability to identify water quality issues allows for swift mitigation measures, protecting both environmental integrity and public health.

The platform’s central feature lies in its capacity to provide real-time monitoring and assessment of water resources. Through the integration of data from satellites, remote sensing, and in-situ sensors, the platform offers a comprehensive view of critical water parameters, such as water levels, flow rates, and water quality indicators. This real-time data equips water managers and policymakers with up-to-date information, enabling them to respond quickly and effectively to emerging water crises, such as floods, droughts, and pollution incidents.

Effective early warning systems play a vital role in minimising the impacts of natural disasters and extreme weather events. The platform’s real-time monitoring capabilities enable the development of early warning systems for floods and other water-related disasters. By providing advanced notice of potential hazards, it empowers authorities to initiate evacuation measures, deploy resources, and implement disaster preparedness plans, significantly reducing the human and economic toll of these events.

Equitable access

By aggregating and processing vast amounts of data, the platform facilitates improved, more informed water resource management. Water managers can access comprehensive and accurate information, enabling them to optimise the allocation of water resources, and so ensure the equitable distribution of water among different sectors and users. EO applications play a critical role in enabling efficient resource allocation by providing a comprehensive view of water availability and demand across different regions. The platform’s insights can help water managers identify inefficiencies, manage water demand, and develop targeted conservation strategies. With a clear understanding of water availability and usage patterns, policymakers can make well-informed decisions regarding water allocation, considering social, economic and environmental factors, ensuring that each sector’s needs are met, and promoting societal stability and economic growth.

Improving resilience

Climate change presents numerous challenges to water resource management, including altered precipitation patterns and more frequent and intense weather events. EO applications are valuable tools for assessing and adapting to these changes. PrimeWater’s platform assists in climate change adaptation by providing data to improve understanding of shifting hydrological patterns, including changes in precipitation patterns, snowmelt timing, and alterations in river flow, improving predictions of future water availability, so enabling stakeholders to develop proactive strategies to adapt to changing climatic conditions, supporting future water security through the development of climate-resilient water management plans.

The data provided by the platform can be used to support decision-making and policy formulation, offering valuable insights to policymakers and water managers, enabling authorities to design evidence-based regulations, conservation measures, and water allocation policies. In addition, the platform’s accessible and user-friendly data visualisation, encourages the involvement of stakeholders, such as local communities, water utilities and environmental organisations, to collaborate efforts, based on shared data and information, creating a more inclusive and holistic approach to water resource management. By engaging end users in the co-creation of adaptation measures, a sense of ownership and commitment to sustainable strategies is fostered, so improving the prospects for successful implementation.

Applications tailored to the end user

Notable results from the project include the collation of the perspectives of end users with regards to the potential applications of EO for water management. Consortium partner, the Burgundy School of Business, designed a comprehensive survey to capture the true feelings and opinions of end users with respect to purchasing and applying EO tools and services for their day-to-day tasks. These insights have helped to improve the quality and effectiveness of the services provided.

End users in the sphere of water management encompass a diverse group, including water utilities, government agencies, farmers, industries, and local communities. Each stakeholder has distinct requirements, challenges and priorities related to water resource management. Understanding their perspectives is crucial to enable EO applications and services to be tailored to meet specific needs.

Actionable information that directly addresses the water challenges of the end user is required. Water utilities, for example, may prioritise real-time monitoring of water levels and quality to optimise distribution networks and anticipate supply disruptions, while farmers may be interested in seasonal forecasts to plan irrigation schedules and maximise crop yields. Engaging end users allows EO providers to develop customised solutions that cater to their specific demands, ensuring greater relevance and adoption.

By integrating EO applications and services in water management systems, managers are empowered with accurate and timely information. EO technologies provide data on various water parameters, including precipitation, river flow, groundwater levels, and water quality, supporting informed decision-making. Access to such data enables stakeholders to make proactive choices, responding effectively to water-related challenges and mitigating potential risks. For example, during droughts, farmers can adjust their irrigation schedules based on satellite-derived soil moisture data, optimising water use and crop productivity. Similarly, water authorities can implement targeted conservation measures, such as water use restrictions, based on EO assessments of water availability and demand. These actions contribute to better resource management, reducing waste and enhancing water use efficiency.

Knowledge sharing

The impact of community participation in water management should not be underestimated. Local communities play an important part in water management and their input is invaluable in identifying water-related issues and proposing context specific solutions. Participatory approaches that involve local communities in data collection, interpretation and decision-making empower them to take ownership of water management initiatives. Such collaboration fosters trust, transparency and cooperation between various stakeholders, strengthening the overall resilience of water management practices. This engagement will help ensure that EO technologies become and remain powerful tools for safeguarding our water systems for current and future generations.

EO4WAT

Fundamental to IWA’s role in the PrimeWater project was the establishment of the Earth Observation for Water Management Community of Practice (EO4WAT), created to bring together a diverse group of water professionals with a shared interest in applying EO technologies to water management.

Still active, EO4WAT serves as a collaborative platform, fostering partnerships to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, building capacity and advocacy for the integration of EO applications in water management practices. Through its endorsement and participation, IWA has contributed to the credibility and effectiveness of the community, attracting a wide range of stakeholders to engage in discussion and learn from one another’s experience. EO4WAT initiatives include training workshops, webinars, and community meetings, which aim to bridge any gaps in knowledge and equip water professionals with the necessary expertise to interpret and apply EO data effectively. This comes at an important time, as human capital will be critical if the benefits of EO technologies are to be maximised, ensuring that their application is implemented successfully and the greatest rewards are secured.

EO4WAT works to promote the integration of EO technologies into water policies and management frameworks at national and regional level, raising awareness of EO’s crucial role in the management of water resources and helping to drive broader adoption of EO with the aim of fostering more resilient and sustainable approaches to global water management.

An invaluable tool

By harnessing the potential of EO technologies, PrimeWater’s EO-supported platform has the power to contribute significantly to sustainable water management, climate change adaptation, and the preservation of our planet’s most precious resource. The PrimeWater Operational Platform stands as a remarkable achievement in water resource management. With its capabilities, the platform has become an invaluable tool for water managers and policymakers worldwide. The project’s commitment to gaining understanding of the needs and priorities of a wide and varied group of stakeholders has enabled EO solutions to be customised, making an important contribution to global water security. •

More information:

Find out more about EO4WAT at  iwa-network.org/projects/earth-observation-for-water-management-community-of-practice

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Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with partners from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the US Geological Survey (USGS), the University of Maryland, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Southern Methodist University, OPERA (Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis) is a project that aims to transform access to environmental monitoring data using satellite technology.

Originally conceived in 2020 with the aim of addressing the satellite data requirements of US federal agencies and to provide timely access to data to inform water management through to wildfire monitoring, OPERA is now freely available, providing user-friendly access to an outstanding breadth of satellite data examining the Earth’s environmental and geological processes.

Utilising data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2 A/B satellites and Landsat 8, built by NASA and operated by USGS, the first round of OPERA products was made freely available in April 2023. The second wave of developments will include the augmentation of data from the cloud-penetrating radars on ESA’s Sentinel-1 A/B satellites and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, launched in partnership between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). In its third iteration, OPERA will additionally draw on satellite radar data from the NASA-Indian Space Research Organisation Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), planned for launch in 2024.

Further to its land observation capabilities, OPERA is aiming to deliver the most comprehensive data available for monitoring lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and streams.

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Well, to distinguish what I do from the role of a Chief Information Officer, which supports all the basics of IT for a business, there are perhaps four things which have given rise to a new era in technology that together explain the role I currently occupy. One is the reduction in cost of compute, and the movement of that compute from the computer to the cloud. Second is the ubiquity of bandwidth. Third is the growth in low-cost sensors and devices that can collect data from pretty much anywhere. Fourth is a range of technology-led use cases that feed off the first three–AI, automation, drones, augmented reality, robotics. Every industry is seeing a type of disruption they haven’t experienced in the last 50 to 60 years since the early days of the information revolution. This means you need a very different business response to compete. Most companies in competitive markets now face challengers in the form of start-ups, and so find they must respond in like manner. A Chief Digital Officer thinks about the various elements I’ve mentioned in terms of both processes and customer outcomes, and the reality is that at some point in time, the role of CIO and CDO will fuse in any truly integrated business. Our CEO Steve Robertson has a strong tech background–having set up BT Openreach–and our focus is very much on the digitalisation of our business and getting information on our customers to generate insight and action.

Start-ups often struggle to scale up to the point where they are self-sufficient or can be bought by larger firms. How can start-ups get in front of potential buyers and investors more easily and effectively?

I don’t see Thames Water buying start-ups, but I can see us partnering with small companies that are offering a product we could apply to our business. Personally, I like working with smaller technology companies because they’re more agile and you can shape what they develop and have them work well with you. The community of investors with angel capital that these start-ups need to tap into is very well funded and extraordinarily brutal. Getting funding is tremendously difficult, track-records are extremely important, and who actually makes these decisions can often be opaque. If you haven’t got the right network, it’s very difficult to succeed. The right board of directors need to be connected to the right group of angel investors, who need to be connected to right investors, all of which gives start-ups the right exposure they need. It’s really all about tapping into that community to make sure you’re funded and can showcase products to companies and further investors.

Is Thames Water planning to partner with any start-ups soon?

In our supply chain, we have a couple of smaller software companies that are developing for us. We’re also working with a small data analytics start-up called Explore AI. Those businesses are quite easy to find however, because they scale with demand. When it comes to hardware or tech related start-ups, it’s much harder, and you need to have the funding to develop products. We’re not working with anyone that is super small and in the field of leading-edge technology, but rather those that have the balance sheet to invest in sensors and technologies that will help us get better insight about our networks. For example, Microsoft and IBM have innovation funds that they are willing to use to invest in problem-solving issues with us. One thing we’re working on is a low-cost sensor to measure headroom in a sewer. Depending on the geometry of a sewer, there has been a minimum headroom space to avoid a flood. If we can measure this, we can know where there might be a blockage, which might lead to a flood or pollution. Some networks will be 20 feet deep, others two feet deep, but whichever you’re working with, if you can detect a problem digitally, you can deal with that problem much quicker. Some of those sensors cost around £1000 each, because no-one has yet scaled them. If you can get that down to £10, then the economics for deploying them nationwide change dramatically. Large firms are instrumental in scaling such products, so we work with them on these projects for long-term supply. I don’t think that its right for us to fund start-ups with our customer’s money, but I do think there needs to be wider, industry-led response.

Thames Water is investing £11.7 billion in new infrastructure in its next five-year business plan. How does your digital strategy come into the various tranches of that investment?

Well, we have 15 million customers, 150,000 kilometres of water, waste and collection piping, and 500-orso factories treating either water or waste. We have a whole heap of customer-type solutions, and a maximum network which needs monitoring, and factories producing stuff meanwhile. There aren’t many businesses in the UK with that sort of spectrum of assets, if I can use that in the broader sense of the word. The regulator in the UK has decided to split wholesale retail for most infrastructure businesses, except for water, so we don’t have that same firm boundary. If you think of some of the more painful problems our customers experience, they not only impact on the customer but on our networks and production as well. Getting real-time data on what happens between customer and supply is therefore critical. We had a pipe burst on Goldhawk Road in London in February this year. Water everywhere. It took us between 10 and 12 hours to identify and shut the main. However, this was a water network that like many has been built over hundreds of years and is interconnected. Out of hundreds of thousands of valves, of which you’re not sure those that will turn off the right main, you have to act on at least two at the same time. All this in midst of a flood and traffic moving through the country’s capital. With data that can pinpoint exactly which you’re looking for and that allows you to isolate the right valves, you’ll get a better customer outcome very quickly. So, we need to stitch together the data about our customers, network and production. We also want to connect our data to our website, so that our customers can see where there are traffic works to re-plan their route.

Early on this year, the United Kingdom recorded multiple incidents of burst pipes after temperatures rose following a prolonged freeze. The national water regulator Ofwat published a report naming several firms that weren’t adequately prepared to respond. How did these events motivate you as Chief Digital Officer, given your relatively new start at the company?

Well, we certainly weren’t walking blind before those incidents. We had a lot of data, but we weren’t always tapping into it. If you think about servers and production facilities, there are a lot of operational technologies measuring reservoir levels and so on. There is a system of control on those levels which triggers an alarm when those levels are exceeded. That is a system that continually uses data to predict an issue, but to do the same for piping networks puts a much bigger strain on the system’s computing power. The question we now have is how we should exploit our existing data to give the operational teams more insight and allow them to respond better. Since the big freeze thaw, we’ve been trying to build visualisations of real-time data flows in a pragmatic way for the operational folks. I think doing that will have, as it has already throughout the summer, a dramatic impact. Personally, I think this has crystallised for me the importance of the work we do with data.

The UK’s Environment Agency has warned that climate change, population growth and land use are exerting stress on England’s water supply and could result in shortages by 2050. Meanwhile, Thames Water plans to build a storage reservoir connecting Oxfordshire to the Thames that could take some 15 years to build. What is your understanding of a water scarcity threat to the UK and how should data be used to mitigate it over the coming decade?

The reservoir issue isn’t one I’m heavily involved in, but if customers use less water, or if we fix more leaks, then we have more supply. There is a range of technological responses to that issue also. By the end of this asset management period, we will have around 300,000 smart meters installed, 700,000 in the next, and 1.5 million in the one after. The intent is to be as fully metered as we possibly can be by 2035. All our customers will know the extent of their consumption, and we can help them reduce it further through awareness and smart tariffs. Typically, when a customer is metered, the reduction in the use of water is somewhere between 12 to 20 percent. One customer’s smart meter was inexplicably ticking all the time. Turned out it is was leak, something like £10,000 worth of water lost. We were able, as part of our customer-side leakage service, to identify that leakage and fix it for free. Around a quarter of the total leakage is on customer pipe work, not Thames Water pipe work, and being able to identify which is ours and which is customer side is important. In any case, we need to get much smarter about where these leaks are, so we can fix them much quicker.

Do you agree that anything that can be digitalised can be hacked, and that Thames Water’s drive to digitalise its operations as the country’s biggest water supplier is a rather daunting prospect?

There is no question that as our business becomes increasingly digitalised security of our systems and data is of paramount importance, especially given the criticality of our services in people’s lives.

In my new structure we appointed a Chief Information Security Officer who is looking at the security of all our IT and OT systems.

As a general point we will make sure we employ best practices using a pragmatic risk-based approach. On the IT side we are investing a lot of money to ensure our network, data centre, applications and end user devices are up to date and secure. This is the primary method of defence. Behind this we have a series of processes and protocols to reduce risk and to respond appropriately to a major global incident. On the OT (connected asset) side the risk is different as we have a number of distributed yet integrated technology systems and sensors across our network.

In this domain we need to ensure that we design the system in a compartmentalised manner so that any incident is isolated and can be contained. If we do this then the impact of any hacking will be less severe. For example, if you take a sewer monitor, the worst that can happen is that it spits our errant data. The response is to send an engineer to investigate who will see that the sensor is misbehaving, and we know not to rely on it. Ultimately in a worst-case scenario we would have to manually control all our key infrastructure, which is part of our incident response process anyway. I don’t doubt we will continue to remain a target for hacking and we will continue to invest in a set of capabilities to appropriately respond.

Interview by Jack Aldane

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For decades, water utilities have confronted rising costs and increasingly variable supplies with slow adoption of new technologies, practices, and behaviour. While the water utility industry is famously conservative, this assumption deserves a closer look as to why and what can be done to drive innovation and improve management choices. The four kinds of constraints that inhibit water innovation are Financial, Evaluation, Adoption and Risk (FEAR).

Financial barriers are both structural and self-reinforcing.

US technology companies spend upwards of 5-15% on R&D. By comparison, water utilities set aside less than 1%, starving entrepreneurs of crucial funds to trial, test, and evaluate new ideas that could improve sustainability and lower long-term costs.

Why are we so reluctant to invest? Water has become almost too inexpensive. Utilities can rarely generate enough surplus to reinvest in supply, treatment or efficiency.

What’s more, water rates, based on cost of service, create a built-in disincentive to provide a safe and reliable supply. Projects delayed for lack of funds put public health at risk.
A related obstacle, deserving (but often denied) 5-10% of the total innovation budget, is programme evaluation, measurement and verification, used to validate utility investment decisions.

Under 20th century stochastic modeling, utilities would design and build infrastructure for a world we think we know, based on historical patterns. Today, the dynamic flux in technology, climate and social networks cry out for flexible water systems that can quickly adapt.

We will still plan for infrastructure. But we really need more flexible systems in order to test new approaches, learn adaptively, and share best practices with a network of peers.

These “soft” systems can bend to evolving and unpredictable needs faster than “hard” concrete and steel can be built, installed, or retrofitted.
Even when innovations are financed and validated, utilities struggle to speed and scale adoption.

Scaling improves cost efficiency and ensures availability of proven, valuable technologies. Yet ‘adoption at scale’ faces widespread industry fragmentation. That balkanization inhibits collective decision making and the implementation of solutions.

In the automobile industry, inventors of an improved windscreen wiper or seatbelt need only sell to the largest 10 automotive companies.

Now consider water utilities. How can any innovative idea or technology be widely and efficiently adopted by over 50,000 water systems – in the US alone?

The water industry needs a framework for consolidation and fast. Multiple utilities could adopt best-of-breed technologies as a group and more rapidly achieve economies of scale if they:

Coordinate procurement. A simplified master services agreement between associations — a regional wholesalers group or among management districts — and a technology provider would achieve technology deployment at scale.

Create a platform that enables utilities to opt-in to choose pre- validated technologies.
Incentivise or require thousands of small utilities (serving fewer than 10,000 people) to band together to enable greater sophistication, purchasing power, and operational efficiency.

Consolidate the industry. In the UK, 1,000 local drinking water systems were reorganised into just 10 regional authorities serving 65 million people under the Water Act of 1973.
Fragmentation problems are compounded by competing regulations. Too often, unfunded federal mandates are passed to states, cities and public agencies to implement. Yes, local control is important, but may result in partial or complete non-compliance, leading to costly consent decrees.

The final key barrier is aversion to risk. Utilities are rightly known for conservatism, given their challenging task of providing a clean, reliable supply of water while avoiding public health risks. But now that culture is obstructing innovation. “To break down this barrier utilities must foster a safe environment for investment, development and adoption of new ideas,” argues Arcadis,

Let’s unpack the sources of risk. Clean water provision is just one utility function. Others include billing and collecting revenue, issuing bonds and paying bond holders, communicating with customers, and managing watersheds. While interconnected, these fall into different buckets.

The High-Risk bucket includes water supply and treatment, and financial management including rate setting. The Low-Risk bucket would include billing and collections (very predictable), and customer communications.

Arguably, technologies that improve performance in the Low- Risk bucket could be a safe space where utilities can experiment with new forms of innovation, and where risk to elected representatives can be managed effectively, leading to a faster pace of adoption. The realm of ‘digital water’ – software, analytics, cloud-computing, big data, sensors, metering, and other information technology — could all fit into this Low-Risk bucket and be managed on a different, streamlined, and rapid adoption track.

By inhibiting the adoption of new technologies, utilities signal to innovators and investors that they should avoid the water sector – exactly when in a rapidly changing climate these services are so urgently needed. So while the clean energy industry is booming, creating over 1 million new jobs in the last 5 years, the water industry is stuck with circa 1980s computing and 1920s pipes.

There’s still time. The water industry may yet be able to modernise. But to do so we must overcome our water industry FEARs — financing, evaluation, adoption and risk — to truly transform the market for the benefit of everyone.

Peter Yolles is the founder of WaterSmart Software Inc.

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While the UK water industry has rightly strived to provide safe and secure water supplies, it has not always been able to meet customers’ unrestricted demand. Every so often, severe dry spells (as exemplified in summer 2018) mean water companies resort to restrictions, such as hosepipe bans.

That approach no longer suffices. Climate change and population growth are intensifying the pressure on water resources, making demand management a daily priority. And while extensive metering, efficiency campaigns, and the reduced size of toilet cisterns have all helped, these old, crude and blunt responses must graduate to proactive technologies.

Indeed, to meet looming household water use targets, the pace of change – and motivation to do so — must accelerate. To speed this transition, digital water offers a powerful catalyst.

Conventional wisdom holds that people can reduce the water use at home by either changing social norms (turning off taps while brushing teeth) or tools (dual flush toilets). The truth is that behaviour and technology have always been intrinsically linked.

Consider how a century ago most people took a weekly bath. Now we take daily or even twice-daily showers. Change emerged through the combination of ‘infrastructure’ (better hot water boilers, standardised plumbing, and en-suite bathrooms) and social practice around personal hygiene and cleanliness.

Household water use has not only been irrevocably disrupted. It continues to be.

This realisation led UK Water Industry Research in 2006 to ask Artesia to harness data in ways that could group customers into five ‘typologies,’ based on their perceived likelihood to be water efficient.

To test and validate earlier efforts, our more rigorous project collected, then re-surveyed, a detailed record of consumption at 62 properties. By doing so, researchers could identify not only how water was being used – to flush, shower, wash clothes etc. – but also, importantly when during the day they used it.

The data revealed fascinating insights. Across the sample of properties, water use varied extensively, both in terms of the total volume used and the end uses themselves. [See Figure A] Beyond the remarkable range of consumption, note how some properties use the same amount of water for very different reasons.

What’s more, customer typologies, based on survey responses, did not reflect how much water people actually used. Granted, sample size and self-selection bias may have influenced the results. But it also reflects how people may give answers they feel are socially acceptable when taking part in a survey.

Half of the observed differences in household water use could be attributed to the number, or ‘occupancy,’ of residents. Yet curiously, a third of the differences in consumption were driven by an unidentified aspect of customer behaviour, which we then set out to investigate.

With the benefit of near-realtime metering, the research team began to look at sub-daily patterns of consumption to see if factors such as home-offices affected results. In fact, daytime occupancy was not relevant to the results. Something unexpected was at work.

Studying the data, we learned to organize households based on the time, on weekday mornings, people most often flushed their toilets. Call it: ‘waking-up time.’ [See Figure B]

These three waking-up groupings – 6am-8am, 8am- 10am and 10am-noon — were further analysed using end use data and survey results. This demonstrated significant common factors within the groups and notable differences between the groups.

For starters, the earliest risers have the most diurnal pattern of water use, with a clear spike in the morning and later in the evening, compared to the other two groups.

These early bird households also have the largest collective consumption, while individuals in the latest rising households each uses more than in the other groups.

Curiously, rates of washing machine use and plumbing losses are greatest for the earliest risers.

Finally, households who wake up between 0800 and 1000 use less water for showering than the two other groups.

All three groups did share some common characteristics [as indicated in Table C].

Perhaps most salient, the research in this table shows how water efficiency strategies can best be custom-designed to the needs and patterns specific to each group’s water-use behaviour. Since early risers are “willing and informed” yet “time poor,” for example, interventions and technologies could aim to have minimal impact on their busy lives.

This research emphasizes the importance of good data for developing targeted and effective campaigns. By parsing the data, more promising approaches can reduce water use to the levels envisaged by levels now being envisaged by UK water regulators and advisory bodies such as the National Infrastructure Commission.

Yet all too often, water companies do not currently know enough about their individual accounts to deliver such carefully targeted activities and calibrated efforts. That must change.

To be sure, they need not know exactly what time each metered water user first flushes the toilet each morning. Yet to deliver ambitious water efficiency targets, companies will have to better understand patterns of human behaviour. That means spending time and money researching the links between the above kinds of variables, combined with better knowledge of occupancy and household types.

Each small household insight may seem slight, minor, quaint, even droll. But in aggregate, they offer a powerful tipping point, rewarding our investments in simple monitoring and surveys by catalysing big, complex, and national-scale changes.

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Global water utilities are about to discover – as 19th and 20th century energy utilities already have – the disruptive force of an innovative technology. It wasn’t the threat any had expected. Nor is it one we can continue to avoid.

In 1883, Thomas Edison had just launched the world’s first ‘power station’ burning coal to supply 59 customers. That same year, Charles Fritts invented a selenium semiconductor that converted limitless and distributed sunlight, without heat or moving parts, into electricity. The pioneering energy titan Werner von Siemens hailed this breakthrough as “scientifically of the most far-reaching importance.” But with 1 percent efficiency, high cost, no storage, and intermittent supply, photovoltaics seemed a negligible distraction to the established energy utility business model.

Since then, energy utilities have largely been slow to embrace opportunities with solar. In the 1950s, solar conductors powered toys, radios and satellites. By the 1980s cheaper rooftop solar panels were linked to the grid. Today, solar shingles, film, and fabric are everywhere. Yet while the sun still only generates less than 2 percent of global electricity, it has begun to erode the rigid foundations of energy utilities.

Why?

The fast-evolving skeleton and skin of solar technology has lowered solar’s price from US$200 to $0.30 per watt. Yet infrastructure “hardware” cost is only a small fraction of the answer.

The real source of disruption has come through the “soft” inner nervous system that connects the sun’s energy to customers. Digital tools, internet-linked sensors, online algorithms, user-friendly analytics and handheld displays have combined to alter the connective tissue of how families and firms relate to their energy resource.

Fast, frictionless and ubiquitous web/mobile systems have redefined the previously complex and invisible flow of energy into simple, clear, parsed and packaged data.

As millions of urban consumers become energy producers – voluntarily choosing when to use, how much to store, or where and at what price to distribute their ‘current’– the stodgy old utility business model is being turned inside out. This new reality reframes how the traditional incumbent energy – and, now, water – utility is valued.

Ready or not, digital tools have quite literally shifted power to the people.

Notably, these digital platforms, algorithms and tools arise from entrepreneurs outside the industry coming from other sectors (e.g. the information and communication sector). They do not ask permission of regulatory agencies, elected officials, or prestigious trade associations. Nest, now owned by Google, did not check in with urban regulators before enabling people to schedule when best to run dishwashers, make ice, heat showers, or condition the air. It just set out to help countless customers affordably reduce their resource consumption in real-time. People can optimise the supply/demand profile on their own terms and timetables.

That left energy utilities to adjust to these collateral impacts, or fail. Unfortunately, all too often the large entrenched interests have tried not to adapt, but rather to restrain the tide of digital technology. With economic roots going back to 1869, the International Hotel & Restaurant Association did not develop or embrace Airbnb any more than the century-old Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association cooked up and welcomed the phenomenon that is Uber. Both enlisted political pressure to contain these brazen upstarts, fighting their spread block by block and street by street. Energy utilities have now engaged in a similar existential struggle, pressing regulators to let natural monopolies control the flow and price of electrons on the grid.

Luddites of the Information Age face a losing battle. Technology, once introduced, can’t be shoved back in the bottle. Since analogue technologies can’t deliver current global needs for energy, water and other services, resistance to digital innovation is futile.

It’s is also self-destructive, filled with wasted time, lost efficiencies and stranded assets. That is why the water sector must learn from other sectors to instead embrace the potential changes already underway. Utilities can, again quite literally, “go with the flow” of digitally-enabled demand and supply, working in partnership with new entrants to the world of water.

Such an alliance could be mutually beneficial: water professionals often lack information technology skill sets and the perspective to appreciate what is possible, while technology entrepreneurs rarely grasp the nuances of complex water systems (which could actually be an asset). By collaborating, urban resilience will emerge faster and smoother; the most durable revolutions avoid bloodshed or razing institutions.

The opportunity for digital water technologies is especially promising for water professionals in emerging economies. The cost of centralised water and wastewater systems can be prohibitive and as a result, emerging economies can develop and manage off grid and localised water systems from scratch, much as the competitive mobile (and now smart) phone access allowed billions of isolated individuals to “leapfrog” the old world of monopoly controlled fixed landlines. Dynamic and data-driven (as opposed to mechanistic) models can help integrate and optimise smart pumps, valves, sensors and actuators; each device can “talk” to each other, or for that matter to a customer’s iPhone, and send real-time information to be accessed and shared via the cloud.

Research by CDP Water found concerns about water risks rank highest in Asia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America, where hundreds of sprawling cities are increasingly exposed to water scarcity, declining water quality and floods. Another study of 70 river-dependent large cities found most may soon be vulnerable to “chronic scarcity” due to “the failure of an urban supply-basin to simultaneously meet demands from human, environmental and agricultural users.”

Against such mounting global tensions, the rise of digital water will prove transformational in making our sector more resilient for its customers as well as fuelling economic development. Acceleration is taking place in relation to less expensive yet more powerful microchips, software applications, automation, data storage, analytics, sensors, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the dynamic complex of sensors and signals known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of so many emerging tools. Far more important is the trajectory and timeframe through which our often reluctant and risk averse sector learns to adopt and scale digital water solutions. There are larger forces at work. After all, digital water transcends urban utilities to potentially connect our water sector with related industries and resource issues, such as energy, health and agricultural production and ecosystems. What’s more, digital water solutions enable adoption of other innovative technologies such as off-grid and localised systems.

The IWA Water-Wise Cities Initiative will ensure they are integrated early and often into urban planning and redesigning to build resilience in the face of the escalating need for water, aging assets and a changing climate. Already, we are helping incorporate digital water solutions that deploy remote sensing for flood prediction, and enable comprehensive hydraulic modelling, to manage stormwater runoff during extreme weather events. The water microgrid builds redundancy, identifies and buffers vulnerabilities and secures the resource supply chain in ways that improve clean water distribution, wastewater treatment, and stormwater management.

Water professionals are often considered, rightly, to be conservative, cautious or late adopters. Yet several potent trends make digital water no longer optional, but rather inevitable.

First, stationarity is dead or dying. Water resource engineers were long trained that “natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability.” The past is no longer a guide. As global change brings local upheaval to decaying water infrastructure, water professionals must update our analytic strategies used for planning investments, with constant, real-time observations of water quantity and quality data.

Second, water users are already profoundly connected. Digital technologies permeate our daily lives in ways that were unimaginable several years ago. Digitisation has accelerated the collection and dissemination of actionable information to all stakeholder groups including utility customers. Smart-sensing technology, utility web-monitoring portals, social media, gamification and AI chatbots allow water consumers greater access to information and higher rates of engagement. By “digitising the utility,” metered accounts can grow more involved and act on valuable knowledge on their usage, costs and conservation strategies.

To be sure, digital water goes beyond the “demand side” of the meter. Connected utility assets help unlock the seamless integration of information and operational technology (IT/OT), creating “silent running” systems, innovations that improve water extraction through smart pumps, or treatment through real-time performance monitoring. A more connected workforce – using “smart” wear allows augmented reality and digital image recognition. Real impact in engagement and efficiency will come through the interaction of big data, clear analytics, smart devices and user-friendly applications.

Finally, the dawn of digital water will enable a utility to seamlessly connect throughout its value chain. This extends from ‘upstream’ supply (basins, aquifers, potable reuse, desalination, or moisture capture) to ‘downstream’ utility operations and customers. What’s more, the utility “watershed” is also inextricably linked in a nexus with the equally critical energy “power-shed” and agricultural “food-shed’, sectors that compete for water thus need to align strategies and actions to ensure adequate resources to support urban growth.

With digital water, IWA is developing the Basin- Connected Cities Action Agenda, which aims to harmonise urban, industrial, agricultural and ecological demands within a watershed. Done right, this approach should balance the delivery of all water needs and services collectively, while reducing our aggregate water foot-print. A digital systems strategy improves our understanding of – and decision-making capacity about — the complex interactions between competing water users, and can help articulate and allocate benefits (and costs) among sectors.

The water sector can learn vital lessons from how digital technologies disrupt other industries. The move to smart buildings, micro-grids and renewables in energy, for example, immensely improved the spread of cost- effective electricity in emerging and developed economies alike. Still, development is not linear; digital technologies enable “leap-frogging” and thus hold enormous potential to solve water challenges and achieve SDG 6.

Yet this digital transformation will not come on its own. Digital water technology adoption requires the engagement and commitment of incumbents, start-ups and entrants from other sectors. These diverse stakeholder groups are now converging in the water sector to scale digital solutions to catalyse the adoption of water solutions through partnerships such as Techstars and the Nature Conservancy and platforms such as 101010.org.

However, it is important to recognise that the integration of disparate systems, potentially creates ‘gaps in the wall’ that allows hackers to breach the security of our water systems. Hence it is imperative that for innovative digital technology entrepreneurs to succeed, security aspects are “baked in” from the start with systematic management of risks to mitigate operational network disruption risks and ‘softer’ business network risks (theft or loss of data and damage to internal business systems).

Water utility leaders may have grown comfortable, even complacent with analogue systems and the idea of stationarity. But IWA believes our sector faces a stark choice: resist the rise of digital solutions, or embrace them in collaboration with innovators to unlock a new era of “water abundance.” In recognition of such potential, IWA has prepared a position paper with Xylem to present to delegates at the launch of a Digital Water initiative in Tokyo at the September 2018 World Water Congress.

Change is always hard. Yet in response to new risks, emerging tools and rising stakeholder expectations, the emerging digital water utility offers the promise of fuelling sustained economic development, business growth and well-being for human and natural communities. The soft path to abundance just takes new thinking. For all the power harnessed by digital technology, no water innovation holds more latent potential than the open human mind.

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