Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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The best of 2019 NWG picks out a selection of the most exciting new ideas to come out of this summer's festival. www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | AUGUST 2019 | 27 Government support; and Barnacle, a smart sensor for toilets that gathers data at every ush and can pick up issues such as leaky loos. Watson, though, says the greatest value so far has emerged from the data hacks. "We use data science for pollutions, ooding and leakage, and we've clearly seen some big impact in terms of return on investment," he says. "Some of the other ideas aren't reaping the same rewards just yet, but they surely will. With the common infrastructure map, for example, we've identi• ed about £1 million in e€ ciencies every year and probably £10 million in reduction in dam- ages to other networks. That one is signi• - cant to our business and massive from the country's point of view as well." Three data hacks took place this year, with 190 data scientists looking at inter- ruptions to supply, water quality and using unstructured data to gain greater intelligence on assets. The festival also hosted 10 sprints – including diving deeper into digital twins and improving surface water management strategies – and 10 one-day mini-sprints, known as 'daily dashes', with topics such as wiping out sewer ooding by tackling customer behaviour. A key aspect of the various brainstorm- ing sessions is the presence of those work- ing outside the sector. While many other water companies attended the event, the festival welcomed new ideas from technol- ogy companies such as CGI, MicrosoŽ , O2, IBM and Apple plus engineering compa- nies, public sector bodies and more. "We also had Bridget Rosewell, who's the chair of Atom Bank and sits as a non- executive director at Network Rail," Watson says. "We love getting people from outside the sector to come in and work with us – we bring our sectoral knowledge to the table but it's always interesting to understand what other sectors are doing. When you make those soŽ collisions between the two, I think that's where the best ideas tend to emerge." This year's festival also had a strong STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) programme that at- tracted a substantial number of youngsters. "It was fantastic and we had a really good range of ages," he says. "There were some around 10 years old building a bridge using cardboard and then they had to stress-test it by putting some weights on it. That generated quite a lot of excite- ment. "With the older kids, we set up a 'Fix It Café' – we brought in three expert menders and they taught the kids how to • x things, including a cello, a guitar, a radio and some toys. It was trying to get away from this con- cept of just throwing things away whenever there's a problem – the planet can't sustain that. We thought it was important to start to grow that movement." NWG is now gearing up for Innovate East – a joint event from Essex & Su› olk Water and Anglian Water that takes place in Ipswich between 10-12 September – and that should provide a platform for even more creative solutions. "Really what we're trying to demonstrate is that water companies can collaborate," Watson says. "We've identi• ed four main subject areas for that one – leakage, which we deliberately didn't touch at this year's Innovation Festival, plus the environment, social inclusion and digital twins. It is help- ful having other events in the calendar. It focuses people's minds and gives them something to aim for." Dragonfl y The Dragonfl y emerged from NWG and CGI's sprint, which explored ways to enhance rural communities and the environment using emerging technologies. The Dragonfl y is an idea for a solar- powered, real-time water sensor for rivers that provides data to support asset manage- ment, promote catchment management and allow communities to engage with the rivers. The data analysed would be shared with stakeholders via digital applications, linking into existing data sources and platforms. Enabled by 5G and facilitated by fi bre-optic cables in the sewer systems, a network of Dragonfl ies would support a 5G mesh to bring high-speed connectivity into rural communities. PlantBuddy IBM worked with NWG on the question of how gardeners and food growers can use less water without aff ecting the quality of what they produce, and came up with PlantBuddy – a platform that hooks up simple sensors to plants to gather specifi c information about how much water they need and when. Seeking to develop the idea further, the team sought ideas for an app, with 76 developers registering, resulting in 35 proposed designs from 10 countries, and a design from South Africa was selected as the winner. A learning platform was also selected to receive £5,000 in seed funding to undertake market research to build on the idea. Mobileye Building on the common infrastructure map project to provide a digital represen- tation of underground utilities, NWG set about completing a year's worth of work in a week alongside Ordnance Survey in the Mapathon session. Mobileye was selected as the best technology to map the above-ground streetscape – providing a mirror to the underground mapping – and was also found to have the potential for secondary mapping benefi ts. The team agreed on the key assets that would be mapped and hope to see 100 vehicles fitted with Mobileye across the region over the course of six months.