Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | JANUARY 2020 | 21 whether there is an underlying reason causing bursts, pressure irregularities or water quality incidents. This information can be used to inform an intervention strategy to optimise and calm the network. This could be achieved by removing harmful pressure transients caused by pumping, PRVs, PSVs, network restrictions or large users and introducing advanced pressure management and network recon• guration to improve reticulation or targeted mains replacement. Customer side leakage Customer side leakage has been shown in studies to account for 30 per cent of leak- age. However, this can only be realised using smart water meters delivering a minimum of hourly reads and due to the cost of roll- out, this would need to be done through a tar- geted approach, focusing on areas of high leakage and low burst rates. Fortunately, the widespread introduction of NBIoT and 5G have provided a great opportunity to roll out smart meters without the need for costly infrastructure and licensed • xed network solutions. Simply understand- ing which customer has a leak does not deliver leakage savings. Companies must have a robust repair and enforce- ment policy which allows the prioritisation of leaks to minimise repair cycle times, the management of which can be done through an integrated smart water network. Smart water network solutions Smart water network solutions integrate the rich data from multiple new and existing sources and present it in a single visualisation platform. Using machine learning and AI, clustering data sets and removing false positives, this informs asset and operational decision making. An example would be combining acoustic and transient loggers with smart revenue and district meter ˆ ow data so analysts can identify a leak and understand the customer and leakage impact. This would enable analysts to prioritise the repair instantly, saving on detection costs and low value leak repairs. It also allows for LEAKS AND BURSTS South East Water smart water network case study South East Water delivered the UK's fi rst smart water network to understand which latest technologies could be implemented to help it meet the challenging AMP7 regulatory leakage and other ODI targets. The project embraced the latest innovation utilising a combined analytical machine learning visualisation platform and the latest sensor technology utilising both 3G, 4G, fi xed network and NBIoT communications. This pioneering project has brought together nine specialist companies in their respective fi elds to test the latest cutting- edge digital water meters, sensors and advanced analytics. This is the fi rst time that data from all these diff ering technologies has been successfully combined into one central 'data lake' for analysis. The smart water network trial has provided invaluable information to inform South East Water's strategy on smart networks and sensor asset strategy including future smart meter selection and deployment strategy. A smart network can improve how water companies deal with incidents through: • Pre-interventions • Faster identifi cation and response, and improved customer interaction • Prioritisation management – escalate priority for a repair based on changing characteristics • Improved forecasting of the length and consequence of an incident – for better targeting of emergency response • Improved messaging and updating of customers • Improved customer demand data – customer event prediction (such as freeze/ thaw) • Potential two-way communication off ered by modern sensors and comms networks • Wakeup all sensors in an incident and start readings • Adjust sensor sensitivity and parameters dynamically • Potential automation of simpler activities. instantaneous mass balances to determine real leakage levels to improve targeting by understanding what usage is and what is main side or customer side leakage. Developing a Smart Water Network and matching the cor- rect sensors for the network is the only way water companies can deliver the leakage target in AMP7. We need to move away from being data-rich and knowledge-poor to data-rich and knowledge-smart. At Stantec, we have experience of supporting our clients in adopting smart network solu- tions across the • ve layers of smart architecture, based upon their business drivers. These range from design- ing the physical asset layer through to developing data analytics to support the de- sired business outcomes. Main image: Installing the latest fi xed and NBIoT acoustic logger technology. Inset: The installation of pressure transient and water quality sensors to monitor the health of the network.