Antonin Fradin, Head of Smart Operations and Assets for SUEZ Digital Solutions, takes an in-depth look at how organisations tackle drought in an era of growing water scarcity.

Antonin Fradin: Drought has become an increasingly pressing issue, dominating headlines and sparking concern across industries and communities. This week, Yorkshire became the latest region to declare a drought, with warnings that more areas may soon follow. Across Europe, fears are mounting as reports reveal that May was the world’s second hottest on record.

Gardeners, farmers, and water utilities alike are grappling with the implications of a changing climate, as the driest spring in 69 years has left river flows, groundwater levels, and reservoir storage alarmingly low. In fact, reservoir levels are now even lower than they were during the infamous drought years of 1984, 1995, and 2022.

Water companies are under mounting pressure to act, but the challenges they face are more complex than ever. Regulatory changes have reduced access to traditionally resilient groundwater sources, while utilities dependent on surface water storage are particularly vulnerable to prolonged dry spells. As the impacts of drought intensify, it’s clear that a proactive, multifaceted approach is needed to safeguard water resources and build resilience for the future. This article explores the strategies and solutions that can help tackle drought head-on in an era of growing water scarcity.

Adding to the complexity, the drive to achieve net zero emissions has made traditional drought responses, such as tankering and long-distance pumping, more heavily penalised due to their environmental impact. In this evolving landscape, what steps should water companies take to ensure a secure water supply while balancing the needs of households, agriculture, and the environment?

In this article, we explore the critical measures utilities must implement to navigate the challenges of drought and safeguard resources for the future. What can be done?

Drought responses need to be deployed quickly to mitigate the impact on water systems and avoid negative publicity focused on the industry.

Typically, when there’s a drought, all the public notices are measures imposed upon them – hosepipe bans and messages to encourage voluntary water conservation and efficient use. This doesn’t always sit well with them.

Behind the scenes there are some key steps that the professionals undertake. SUEZ operates water facilities worldwide and faces the increasing challenges of water stress, droughts and floods that are becoming more frequent and extreme. Water scarcity is a worldwide issue and there are lessons to be learned.

Immediate action: Leak detection is key

Shortening leak run times is crucial, as the longer a leak persists, the greater the water loss. In the UK, non-revenue water (NRW) averages 20%, with regional variations, and an astonishing 3 billion litres of treated water are wasted daily due to leaky pipes. This costs customers nearly £400 million annually. Water utilities are making progress in addressing these issues, despite challenges such as aging infrastructure, ground movement, fluctuating water pressures, and the growing impacts of climate change. However, with drought conditions looming, it is more critical than ever to conserve the water we have by intensifying leak detection efforts and accelerating repairs.

How? Satellite leak detection, an ASTERRA technology, supplied by SUEZ, is a very fast and efficient way to spot points of interest within a whole water network. A scan of all the trunk and distribution mains is very useful (particularly now with the recent changes in regulation regarding trunk mains leakage measurements). Satellite is ideal to help utilities prioritise their field teams’ efforts to pinpoint the leak and get it mended.

Follow this up with the Nautilus smart ball from Aganova, which will provide the exact position of the leak. Equipped with sensors that can survey up to 35 kilometres of trunk mains in a single operation, it can be inserted into the live pipe network where it will be pushed along by the flow within the pipe. What sets Nautilus apart is it can be used in far-flung areas where it's difficult to do traditional active leak detection surveys.

A valuable alternative for newly laid mains that are failing pressure tests or raw water trunk mains is the non-intrusive SUEZ iDroloc®. Even small leaks can be traced using this highly accurate detection system using helium gas. It injects the tracer gas into the water main to detect leaks without interruption to service. It can be used for large-diameter mains, smaller distribution pipes, or household connections in urban areas. iDroloc® can detect very small leaks, even in large-diameter pipes, offering an accurate and efficient alternative to conventional acoustic methods.

Short-term actions

What’s the next thing that can be done? Improve water production planning. By simulating a variety of scenarios on what would happen in the case of a drought, a water company can optimise their supply strategies to mitigate the consequences of the drought. And, importantly, they will then have the evidence they need for additional abstraction should the need arise.

How? SUEZ Aquadvanced® Production Planning is a production planning tool designed to deliver a safe and reliable water supply. It ensures compliance with all licensing and quality targets by developing short-, medium-, and long-term coordinated regional plans. These plans respond to changing conditions while incorporating forecast demands and capacity planning. The tool helps efficiently and effectively manage water assets.

Medium-term actions

Reducing background leakage and demand should be the next area to tackle.

Improving pressure management will reduce customer demand as well as reduce leakage in the network. How? Pressure management, particularly when combined with an optimisation strategy developed by Optimizer™, focuses on maintaining consistent and efficient pressure within a system by adjusting PRV & pump set-points to meet demand while ensuring over-pressurisation is minimised.

It is also important to measure pressure closely, locating the cause of pressure transients to prevent bursts – nothing will irritate the public more than a headline hitting burst when they are being asked to stop watering their lawns. How? Inflowmatix® provides state-of-the-art pressure sensors and software analytics. The intuitive, high-speed water pressure and analytics system, enables utilities to pinpoint the root causes transients (and therefore bursts) in water networks.

Long-term actions

Water scarcity is a long-term issue that cannot solely be tackled with short-term actions. When preparing for climate change and the years ahead, recognising that the potential for drought will continue, there are technologies that will provide more flexibility as well as help to transform the way water is managed. They are part of the digital transformation of the industry and for good reason. They work ahead and alongside the more construction-oriented water supply solutions, improving the efficiency of what a utility already has in place.

Software such as SUEZ Aquadvanced® Water Networks provides real-time monitoring, detection and localisation of leaks. Amongst many other benefits, it cuts the time it takes to get to leaks and helps to prioritise field resources. It is an advanced analytics tool for monitoring water quality and losses in distribution networks in real time.

This module helps you optimise network operations and improve customer service. It enables utilities to monitor their drinking water networks remotely and continuously so as to improve overall operational efficiency while delivering an excellent service.

Smart metering is widely known to have multiple benefits for water management, notably for identifying customer-side leakage, but also, with the right analytics capabilities such as ON’connect™ Coach, can nudge customers on how they use water, encouraging them to use less and to turn to more efficient domestic and industrial machinery in their homes and businesses.

SUEZ Aquadvanced® Water Supply provides dynamic, automated and optimised control of supply. It utilises SCADA and telemetry systems to read live data and issue commands to pumps and valves throughout an entire distribution system, producing the correct volume of water where and when it is needed. It helps maximise operational performance and water quality at a level above traditional control room operations.

Water supply resilience

In the face of dwindling freshwater resources and growing environmental challenges, it is critically important to secure our water supply. Water supply resilience refers to a system's ability to withstand and recover from shocks, disturbances, or stresses that threaten its ability to provide adequate water resources. It's crucial for mitigating the impacts of climate change, population growth, and economic development on water availability.

This increasing pressure for resilience will inevitably mean the UK will turn to desalination plants to meet water demands.

How? SUEZ offers innovative and sustainable desalination, providing expertise in the design, construction and operation of seawater or brackish water desalination plants, perfectly suited to meet the individual requirements whether to produce drinking water, or to meet irrigation or industrial water needs.

In the UK, increasing the interconnectivity of the water network will facilitate the movement of water from north to south, east to west. Optimising water transfer can be managed more effectively with Aquadvanced® Production Planning and Optimizer.

Extreme Drought

What is the ultimate "if all else fails" solution—the emergency option you can rely on? That’s where Optimizer™ for water scheduling comes in. Intermittent distribution is an undeniable reality in several countries in Africa, South America and Asia and SUEZ has specialist team of experts to address these issues. Designed to ensure equitable access to water during supply deficits, by leveraging critical data such as asset information, operational metrics, critical pressure levels, consumption patterns, flow measurements, and non-revenue water (NRW) data, Optimizer™ creates a comprehensive hydraulic model. This model that generates optimised supply and tank schedules, ensuring fair water distribution across sub-DMAs or pocket areas, even in challenging conditions.

Drought Preparedness

As the UK grapples with the increasing frequency and severity of droughts due to climate change and lower-than-average rainfall, it is imperative for water companies to adopt a proactive, multi-faceted approach. From immediate leak detection and short-term production planning to long-term investments in digital transformation and water supply resilience, these measures are essential to safeguarding water resources. By leveraging advanced technologies and optimising existing infrastructure, utilities can ensure a secure and equitable water supply for households, agriculture, and the environment. SUEZ is capable of and has experience with supplying and implementing all these solutions, offering expertise and innovative tools to address both immediate challenges and future demands.The time to act is now – building a resilient water future depends on it.