Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | FEBRUARY 2023 | 11 Water mitigate peak loads, were installed free-of- charge at customer properties in two areas. The intervention prevented the local storm over ow from activating entirely for a large part of the summer and into the autumn and some 5,000 more water butts have been pur- chased to scale up the programme. Natural progression Nature-based solutions for drainage and wastewater management, like swales, wet- lands, and balancing ponds, can be more cost-e• ective and provide added biodiversity and social bene• ts, but Ofwat said in its letter to water companies, it had "not seen satisfac- tory evidence" that water companies "have fully explored such options or provided com- pelling evidence for discounting them". An innovative partnership, between the Rivers Trust and United Utilities aims to de• ne a clearer path forward by removing the systematic barriers that prevent long -term, landscape-scale approaches from get- ting o• the ground. The partnership was awarded £7 million by the Ofwat Innovation Fund to set up a "catchment systems thinking cooperative" and develop a new framework for gathering data and evidence on the impact of nature- based interventions. It has since expanded to include 12 water companies across Eng- land and Wales, and some 30 other organi- sations, including universities and industry practitioners. According to Amina Aboobakar, commer- cial director at the Rivers Trust, who is on secondment from her role at United Utilities, regulatory, funding and a• ordability bar- riers include the traditional • ve-year plan- ning and investment cycle, which prevents long-term thinking and a lack of evidence demonstrating the consistent performance of nature-based solutions. "Why is it that we are great at creating tactical pilot projects, but fail to transition to scale?" Aboobakar says to Utility Week. "That's a barrier preventing impact investors and green • nance from really coming into this space." The partnership aims to extend the capa- bilities of citizen scientists and train volun- teers to deliver more standardised methods for catchment monitoring and producing evi- dence, which in turn will support more stra- tegic planning on where to locate continuous monitoring. "With more boots on the ground collect- ing data, we're going to get a much better baseline," explains Aboobakar. "If methods are standardised and the data is trustwor- thy, you can use it for regulatory purposes, for decision making, to report on invest- ment and better understand how to tap into innovation." The improved evidence base should help unlock new forms of • nance and investment, she adds: "We know these are precisely the sorts of thing green • nance and impact investors want to see. We've already seen it in the US where, for example, environmen- tal impact bonds brought billions of pounds into coastal restoration and ood resilience." A proposed follow-on project looking at other barriers to nature-based solutions, including regulatory, is short-listed for £9 million under the Ofwat Innovation Fund. Data driven Accurate data on the operation of waste- water networks is critical to understanding performance, identifying sites susceptible to over ows, and pinpointing where to target future investment. However, such innately inhospitable environments can disrupt sen- sors and communications, creating anoma- lies and making it impossible to achieve 100% data quality. "The more people we have accessing the data, making better use of it and spotting anomalies and making corrections, the better the data quality becomes," explains Andrew Myers, lead architect at Northumbrian Water, which is spearheading a sector-wide project to develop an open data platform to sup- port data-sharing, collaboration and best practise. Over the past two years, a consortium of 11 water companies has been designing Stream, a scalable open data framework, funded via the Ofwat Transform innovation fund, intended to help the sector improve transparency, collaboration and e™ ciency. Open data is critical to how water com- panies respond to the CSOs issue going for- ward, says Myers: "Various stakeholders have been openly critical of water compa- nies, so we need to have an open conversa- tion on the reasons behind that performance. By being more proactive and publishing information we can show, for example, the spills that have occurred, the investigations we've done, and the outcomes we've found." An initial blueprint for Stream, covering the "enabling" groundwork required to sup- port publication of open data, will be signed o• in March 2023. This includes legal and governance matters, de• nitions for di• er- ent data sets, agreements for how open data sets can be shared, between companies or between di• erent stakeholders in the supply chain, and compliance with the rules around critical national infrastructure. "We're going go back to Ofwat to request further funding," says Myers. "If we're suc- cessful, we should be able to get a platform up and running in of 2023." And open data on wastewater networks is "up there" as a compelling initial use case, he adds. Improved transparency about what is pumped into our waterways and why will be crucial to addressing public concern and, with the other initiatives detailed here, should help forge a path ahead for both the water sector and the communities it serves. Mansfi eld SuDs scheme tackles storm overfl ows A rst-of-its-kind, £76 million water manage- ment project in Mans eld will see an array of nature-based solutions implemented to help alleviate pressure on storm overflows and potentially shape the future of flood and wastewater management in the UK. Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDs) interventions, including rain gardens, street planters, detention basins and permeable paving will be rolled out in the town through an innovative partnership between Mans eld Dis- trict Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Severn Trent Water and other organisations. The measures, due to be completed in 2025, will be capable of storing a total of around 50 million litres of surface water (roughly 60% of the anticipated network stor- age required in Mans eld by 2050) and slow and reduce the flow into the waste network during rainfall. According to Adam Boucher, Green Recov- ery programme lead at Severn Trent, a key technical challenge was developing blue/green intervention standards for SuDs that have volume capture as the primary driver as well as devising methods to quantify the bene t of each intervention. Boucher tells Utility Week: "This project has the potential to deliver the blueprint for how we manage flooding risk in the future, reduce storm overflow activations and help rewind the clock following the paving over of permeable surfaces and verges in our towns and cities over previous decades." 1617 MAY, NEC, BIRMINGHAM See this content brought to life at Utility Week Live. Register free at: https://www.utilityweeklive.co.uk Andrew Myers will talk about building data infrastructure for digital utilities on the Smart stage at Utility Week live on 17th May. Amina Aboobakar will talk about opportuni- ties for nature based solutions on the Net Zero stage at Utility Week Live on 16th May.

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