Southern Water has announced that work to innovate as part of its wider goal of driving down use of storm overflows has been recognised with two projects awarded a share of Ofwat’s Innovation Fund.
Photo: water quality monitor in situ
The schemes were awarded funding from Ofwat in its fourth Water Breakthrough Challenge, that looks for solutions with the potential to deliver wide-scale transformational change benefiting customers, society, and the environment.
The first project to benefit will receive £1.58 million and will help the utility to develop a platform for water quality monitoring that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse and calibrate data from monitors. If proven, the platform will support the water company’s efforts in expanding water quality monitoring of waterbodies across its region. Southern Water said this will help to improve its ability to learn more about water quality in the region as part of its efforts to create healthier rivers and seas.
The project will address the challenges that water quality monitors face - due to the environment they are deployed in, maintenance and calibration is challenging and expensive.
Southern Water said that using AI and machine-learning could be a gamechanger, which, if successful, will make it much easier to deploy more monitors, whilst improving the accuracy of information that they provide.
The second project will benefit from £1 million and will help the utility to develop a unique platform to help make informed decisions about where to put sustainable urban drainage solutions (SuDs)
The tool, which the company’s in-house modelling team and partners at HR Wallingford, are developing, will help Southern Water to understand the benefits of placing SuDs in more areas of its network. SuDS-iQ will enable users to understand what SuDS are, how they work, and the benefits they provide within a visual, online environment.
SuDS-IQ will also provide a platform for collaboration in the wider water industry through collaboration with partners at Yorkshire Water, Thames Water and Anglian Water. The tool will also be co-developed with SuDS users in other sectors, including local authorities and developers.
Southern Water Innovation Programme Manager, Rory Miles, said:
“Innovation is key for activities across Southern Water, from developing new solutions to help us tackle big challenges: from water efficiency to protecting our environment. We need to think creatively and collaborate in and out of the water sector to address these very complex challenges.”
“Both of these projects will help us in our work creating healthier rivers and seas, and will enable us to implement more solutions across our region – through finding the best places to place SUDS, and to support an expansion of our water quality monitoring.”
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