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4 WET NEWS APRIL 2019 | wwtonline.co.uk NEWS+ Smart networks may hold key to tackling sector's big issues • Delegates at the WWT Smart Water Networks conference highlight the potential offered by technologies now being implemented around the globe Robin Hackett reports from Birmingham • Collaborative groups providing platform to develop potentially disruptive new ideas S mart technology can help the water industry tackle some of its biggest chal- lenges including the skills gap, Xylem Europe general manager Andrew Welsh told the WWT Smart Water Networks conference. Xylem is one of the major players in helping water compa- nies around the world adopt smart solutions, with the combi- nation of new sensors, new communication technologies and new analytical solutions allowing companies far greater insight into their networks. Highlighting the Environment Agency chief executive Sir James Bevan's warning that England may be 25 years away from run- ning short of water supplies, Welsh said it is not a matter of whether companies here will adopt smart water systems but whether they can afford not to. "There are companies around the world that are buying these systems," he told delegates. "In America, for instance, they can't afford to build themselves out of trouble – they need to manage their sewers better, they need to manage their networks better. I think that's the reason they have been early adopters." Welsh said the benefits that can be gained from smart sys- tems are significant and that it is important to start small and demonstrate value early on as the utility adapts to the new technology. He also that said that, while analytics will deliver significant benefits, automation is key to gaining full value. Automation involves smart systems not only offering predictions and recom- mendations but acting on them without human intervention. "That's a scary step – letting computers completely run your system rather than operators with all their years of experi- ence – but at the end of the day we have an ageing workforce," Welsh said. "We need to get hold of our experience and knowledge and get it into our systems." ATi managing director Michael Strahand agreed that automation is a central part of smart systems' value. "It needs to be automated," he told the conference. "We're already in that world. There are PRVs now that can be controlled from water quality sensors or pressure sensors, so you can let the system control itself." was opening up new possibili- ties in areas such as burst detection. For example, he showed an incident in which spikes in tur- bidity data had been caused by a small hole in the network that two days later had become a burst. Chlorine monitors, mean- while, could highlight whether the water is decaying too quickly, which could mean there is ingress into the pipeline or biofilm. Strahand said there has been a "momentum shi"" in smart recently, adding: "It does feel like we're getting somewhere now." l The WWT Smart Water Networks Conference 2019 took place in Birmingham on 21 March and was sponsored by ATi, Black & Veatch, Kemira and Sensus He said the shi" to smart net- works has been facilitated by various factors, including the ability to gather, communicate and store vast amounts of data quickly and cheaply, as well as the size of sensors. "As recently as 2008, if you wanted to measure water qual- ity in a distribution network, you needed a panel that was about the size of a small car with mains power, lots of moni- tors, lots of sensors," Strahand said. "Modern technology has moved on to the point where you can get two sensors into a cup. "It is now possible to go right into the water distribution sys- tem and measure water quality inside hydrants." He highlighted how the abil- ity to place significant quanti- ties of sensors into new areas Water hubs opening door to new solutions T he collaborative working practices promoted by water hubs could hold the key to tackling some of the sec- tor's biggest challenges, dele- gates at February's World Water- Tech Innovation Summit heard. Water hubs involve groups of organisations – such as water companies, SMEs, research facilities, universities and gov- ernment agencies – coming together to share technology and data in an effort to identify new ideas. The Water Innovation Hub, part of the University of Shef- field-led TWENTY65 project, is one of the more recent exam- ples, beginning in 2016 with the aim of "developing a research roadmap" for the water sector. "The remit of the hub is to make research more collabora- tive and the sector as a whole more coherent and cohesive so we can re-visualise the future of water," Sheffield University's Caroline Wadsworth, who man- ages the Hub, told the confer- ence on 28 February. "We put a lot of effort into cre- ating a collaborative environment in which we can work with researchers, supply- chain members, policymakers and regulators to make sure they're all engaged, and we do that through a number of differ- ent mechanisms like thought leadership clubs, conferences, workshops and events. "We work with the water com- panies, contractors and NGOs to ensure that they're advising and directing and making sure we are delivering what we said we would do from the research per- spective. It's really key that we have that engagement so that we can get a product to commer- cialisation in the end." The Hub secured the funding for the initial research into the feasibility of developing tiny robotic devices that can be released into the buried infra- structure networks with the aim of inspecting and potentially even repairing cracks. Having established the viabil- ity of the concept, the University of Sheffield is now working alongside scientists from Bir- mingham, Bristol and Leeds universities to develop the idea using a Government grant. "This will be a total gamechanger if we can take it through to commercialisation," Wadsworth added. "It could be a very disruptive solution, but we had to get proof of feasibility and we've then gone on with our collective power and applied for an additional programme grant and secured a further £7.5 million to take that product through to commercialisation. That was only possible through the work of the Hub." United Utilities, meanwhile, has built on its previous experi- ence with water hubs to develop the Innovation Lab, which gives businesses the chance to take part in a 10-week programme that enables them to test their solutions in a live environment. Having proved six new tech- nical concepts last time around, including EMAGIN's operational intelligence plat- form, Typhon's UV LED treat- ment technology and Hydrao's water-saving smart shower heads, United Utilities began accepting applications for 2019 last month. "We decided to do something on our own because we wanted to make sure that we find things that are relevant and tailored to us," Kieran Brockleback, United Utilities' head of innovation, said. "It's a co-creation, co-loca- tion programme. It's a competi- tive process giving people the opportunity to be part of our organisation, to have access to all of our customer information, all of the engineering resource they might need, to bring their idea closer to market penetration. "It was a huge undertaking for us – nobody had ever done that in the UK water sector before. We did it because we wanted to find out whether we could go faster and find new entrants to the UK water sector. We were very successful." The Water Alliance in the Netherlands, which involves public and private companies, government agencies and knowledge institutes, has also had numerous successes in its efforts to develop innovative and sustainable water technol- ogy that can be used worldwide. Its managing director, Hein Molenkamp, told the conference that the growing popularity of hubs is an encouraging devel- opment but it will be important to see them combining their efforts around the globe. "There's a lot of initiatives in the last 10 years," he said. "That's positive. I think the next step is how can we collaborate so that we're strong together and help solve issues." In September, the Water Alli- ance founded the Water Tech Hub Alliance alongside groups from South Korea, China, Singa- pore, Israel and the United States. "We need an alliance to address the huge challenges on water quality issues, for instance at the fast-growing cities in the world and growing need for food," Molenkamp said. CONFERENCE SOUNDBITES "We are on a journey but I feel we've had some big wins where we've had a business challenge, looked at it through the lens of data and found a new way of thinking. We've been able to optimise some areas of the business using this mindset" Martin Jackson, Northumbrian Water head of IS strategy "As far as we're concerned, smart networks are absolutely fundamental but they don't exist within a silo. We need to think about interventions that will give us resilience not just for one threat or shock but multiple threats in combination" Trevor Bishop, Water Resources South East "If we want to get smarter in that operation and maintenance space, understanding where we apply the innovation is key. There has to be cost benefit in putting it into the asset base" Christopher Steele, Black & Veatch head of information management and analytics for Europe Caroline Wadsworth manages the Water Innovation Hub Xylem's Andrew Welsh addresses the conference

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