In an Expert Focus article for Waterbriefing, Andrew Welsh, General Manager for Water Utilities at Xylem Water Solutions UK explores reducing water leakage via the smart use of data to inform on current incidents and predict future ones.

Andrew Welsh: Now more than ever, water and wastewater managers are facing acute infrastructure challenges, from pipe leaks, main breaks, sewage and storm water overflows, energy-intensive operations, to insufficient data for decision-making and asset management.

Compounding this, cities are expanding at a rapid pace and pandemics such as we are experiencing globally, are putting water networks – already suffering from a historical lack of investment – under immense pressure.

Within Europe, non-revenue water (NRW) accounts for 24 percent of supply on average, with the rise in global energy prices and the increasingly stringent regulatory environment is adding further complexity, leaving water managers under greater pressure to do more with less. 

Smart water solutions – including physical intelligent equipment and treatment, wireless smart networks, and digital solution, such as cloud analytics, powerful data modelling, and the internet of things – offer new ways to address the industry’s challenges and opportunities. These are not prototypes being tested in a laboratory; these are proven solutions that are already delivering dramatic improvements in water productivity, quality and resilience.  

The good news is that utilities are already adopting these smart technologies, driven by the need to mitigate water scarcity, improve operations, and efficiently meet emerging regulations. The substantial benefits from these smart solutions include:

• Safety: Increased safety and control throughout water and wastewater operations. 
• Operational cost: Reducing the energy and maintenance cost in the distribution network. 
• Resilience: Identify, predict and prevent failures and downtime in critical equipment. 
• Flexibility: Increased flexibility to handle different situations (e.g. volumes, parameters) with existing infrastructure. 

Smart Water Solutions

The transition to smart water solutions does not necessarily involve complex systems and can be broken down across three areas: intelligent equipment, smart networks and digital solutions.

For water managers, intelligent equipment reduces time and effort needed to monitor and maintain critical technologies. Smart networks enable remote and continuous monitoring of operations and real-time reactive management and maintenance, while digital solutions enable preventive adjustments to operations and proactive management of the system based on data-driven decisions.

A better understanding of smart water solutions could be that it offers rapid rewards from small, incremental changes.

Prepare and Respond

The basic premise of smart water solutions is built upon the methodology of being able to “sense, predict and act”. Gathering and integrating data into “one source” whether collecting data from existing sensors or existing software systems (e.g. GIS, SCADA). It is then possible to use this consolidated view of data alongside AI and machine learning to make predictions.

For instance, conducting thousands of calculations to understand how the system will work when “x” happens so that the best scenarios are established. This then enables utilities to act and develop strategies powered by predictive insights and intelligence to make the right decisions before events happen.

Proactive, predictive network operation enables water managers to gain control of their data, reduce system loses and proactively manage assets. Smart water analytics help utility companies to understand where problems are, get to them faster and predict better where problems are going to be. Smart technology can also be used to leverage legacy data sources and existing fixed monitoring instrumentation.

In terms of reducing leakage, smart water analytics can help to detect and locate pipe bursts faster, track and prioritise pipe leaks before they become bursts, improve asset lifetime and support better asset replacement strategies and maximise the benefit of existing and future monitoring investments.

All of this could help utility companies to potentially avoid £millions of emergency repairs and unnecessary pipe replacement.

Being Smart with Water

Utilities across the globe are deploying smart water solutions with outstanding results.

Thames Water installed smart meters across its network of 15m London customers. By collecting and analysing daily data reports, the utility was able to locate leaks and other sources of NRW quickly. The smart network delivered multiple benefits including more equitable billing, prompt identification of leaks and pipe ruptures, and an enhanced customer experience.

South Australia Water has integrated more than 400 sensors paired with world-leading analytics across the Adelaide CBD to provide a detailed view of the water network. The technology has enabled SA Water to identify and proactively fix leaks before they impact customers.

Park City Utah conducted a 6-month campaign using pressure and acoustic sensors and real-time leak and burst detection analytics. The smart technology identified 1.1 MLD of leakage at a cost of $57k.

A private utility in Singapore was experiencing leaks and bursts breaks on 9 miles of new steel trunk main with unknown cause. By implementing high sampling rate pressure sensors and advanced analytics the utility was able to quickly detect, locate and mitigate large magnitude, damaging pressure transients, saving approximately $15 million.

A Smarter Future is in Sight 

What can utilities do now to realise the smart water opportunity?  

Focus on a limited number of high impact use cases: Don’t try to do too much at once – first hone in on your most critical challenges and then consider these as the initial use cases for exploring digital solutions. 

Don’t be afraid of workarounds today while laying the foundation for tomorrow: While a digital strategy and a team of dedicated digital experts is beneficial, these don’t need to be in place to begin driving significant value from piloting digital solutions. 

Begin building a set of technology and thought partners: There are a number of technology partners, utility peers, and industry networks which are driving the thinking on digital water – leveraging these partners can help utilities to more quickly build the capabilities needed to be successful.  

Set the ambition across the organisation: To fully realise the value from digital solutions, the ambition needs to be set across the entire organisation – from CEO-level to Operator-level. 

Even at this early stage in the adoption of smart water solutions, several studies involving qualitative research with global water utilities and economic analyses indicate that annual savings of between £9.5bn and £11.5bn a year are achievable through reductions in capital and operational expenditure.

In fact, utilities are expected to invest $14 billion in smart water technologies through 2024.  With a lot done to date, we still have so much more we can do. Let’s solve water and seize the opportunity for a smarter water future. 

For more detail on smart management of water leakage, click here to watch the webinar on the Waterbriefing Watch channel

For more information on Xylem’s range of innovative technology solutions to the world’s water challenges - www.xylem.com/ uk

About the author: Andrew Welsh is Xylem’s General Manager for Water Utilities. Along with his team, he is responsible for delivering a broad range of Smart Water Solutions to help address the challenges faced by customers in varying applications throughout the water cycle. These customised solutions can be a combination of Cloud hosted systems for network and water treatment across both clean and wastewater applications.