Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | NOVEMBER 2021 | 39 and operational performance of our assets," shesays. "We'll be able to see things like the rain- fall forecast and any changes in the perfor- mance of the system in response to that rainfall and the demands it can create on the system. "We'll also be able to visualise the con- nectivity within the network, how these sen- sors relate to each other within the system, and more importantly how the assets within the drainage areas impact on each other," Sloan continues. "So, the key element of the dynamic network management platform is really about understanding 'system level' performance, which is a massive thing for us. We will be able to start understanding how any speci• c asset is performing, and the overall performance of the wastewater net- work in a particular area and how that can impact on other parts of that network." Analysing patterns of behaviour United Utilities' use of AI to provide greater visibility on how its wastewater network and other assets function on a real-time basis also o ers the chance to predict any issues and provide customers with a "quiet service" before bigger problems develop. "That could be things like the system detecting that there's a build-up of silt in a particular area, or that we begin to see a deterioration in performance of a particular asset," Sloan says. "The impact of this in the past may have been met with the customer experiencing something, such as ƒ ooding, • rst-hand in many cases. "We are now able to get our eyes and ears on what is happening on the wastewater net- work, to prevent things such as ƒ ooding or pollution, in a much more proactive rather than reactive way." The new technology identi• es patterns in data gathered and compares it with other available datasets to provide a full under- standing of the performance boundaries for each area. "So when there's a change we can apply what we call an 'event to alert logic' to be able to determine what is the likely cause for that deviation from normality," Sloan explains. "The AI that we use is a neural network that learns trends in the system, which is quite fundamental because it predicts the future behaviour as well as current activ- ity," she says. "So it not only gathers infor- mation from the asset, but the environment within which that asset is performing, and allows you to predict patterns of behaviour, as opposed to just alerting on water reaching a certain level. "It determines changes in patterns of Utility Week Live 2022 See this content brought to life at Utility Week Live, 17-18 May 2022, NEC Birmingham Delivering smart water networks is one of the frontline challenges at the heart of Utility Week Live 2022's live content programme. View the challenges and be alerted for tickets to the industry's most eagerly awaited reunion at utilityweeklive.co.uk. behaviour, which means you have a clear understanding when you are required to do something about the alert rather than simply responding for the sake of it." The approach and technology are both "new and novel", according to Sloan, and have not been applied on a mass scale any- where else to the best of United Utilities' knowledge. "We needed to develop this new innova- tive approach to answer our requirements for now and into the future, which we believe will see this technology being rolled out across the board for all water companies within the next • ve to 10 years," Sloan says. "We are focusing on wastewater currently but we can see already how we could utilise AI across other areas of the business." Climate change response For Sloan, the sizeable task of deploying more than 19,000 sensors across a network of 78,000km is compounded by the chal- lenge of implementing new technology within an "ageing infrastructure". "Managing the installations on such a large scale, across busy urban centres for example, can come with its challenges, from traŽ c management to health and safety and access issues to physically getting into the network," she adds. "There isn't a blueprint to work from, which means it is a steep learning curve along the way. We are having to test, tweak and manage as we go, which requires patience and a great team of people on the programme to help develop and grow this bespoke solution, while ensuring that it is cost e ective for our customers." Sloan believes that the use of AI is just the tip of a very exciting iceberg when it comes to sector innovation, suggesting that new iterations of dynamic network man- agement and the use of satellite imagery to understand network performance and condi- tion are in the pipeline. She says climate change is undoubtedly the biggest driver of innovation at United Utilities — and is one of the principal reasons that dynamic network management has been developed. "We are seeing more intense and more frequent storms," she says. "Couple that with an aging network, things can feel more vulnerable and the impact felt is not only within the network but in the environ- ment around the network too. "Things such as rising river levels under these storm events mean we cannot always discharge to the river, which in turn increases the risk of ƒ ooding. So what we are doing is targeting these areas that are at risk, with the dynamic network management solution, so we can best forecast the potential issues and respond accordingly throughout the year. "Dynamic network management not only allow us to understand issues such as storm intensity and the impact it has, but also seasonal variations across the region, all of which will help us to better plan our resources and to support our approach for further investment over the next 10 to 20 years for our drainage areas." Stuart Stone, UW Innovate editor "We are seeing more intense and more frequent storms. Couple that with an ageing network, things can feel more vulnerable." Samantha Sloan, network business manager, United Utilities

• Cover