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24 | 5th - 11th December 2014 | UtILItY WeeK Operations & Assets Market view W hat would smarter water look like? It would taste good, it would be readily available and fully potable, it would be priced to reflect demands and the state of the environment, but price would not lead consumers to restrict consumption to a level where health or wellbeing, or (for industrial and business users) economic success is compromised. It would allow the environment to flourish. How far away from this ideal are we in reality? Probably not too far, in that water is already available and potable, it tastes pretty good most of the time, it is not deliv- ered or charged for in such a way that we see consumers consciously putting health, wellbeing or economic success at risk, and the environment is protected while previ- ous environmental ravages are slowly being rectified. There are issues of water poverty, where people cannot afford to pay for their bills because of constraints in their financial resources. However, since water companies are not allowed to disconnect customers for failure to pay, this is one of the more elastic expenses. The burden of cost for the system potentially falls more heavily on others, given there are those that cannot or will not pay. It is seen as in every consumer's inter- est, therefore, to keep bills affordable. Smarter water, with smarter metering, would allow people who have more discre- tionary spare money to spend more on water, even on a rising block tariff, thereby explic- itly allowing cross-subsidy to consumers who cannot afford to pay much but still have a need for water. The current situation therefore looks quite good. Most people aren't even aware of the water or wastewater sector until there isn't enough water – or conversely too much of it. So it is hard to see where the benefits in smarter water lie. We have had flooding in recent years – both river and surface water – and some people have even had to endure sewage flooding. Nor should we forget that there have been water shortages, during 2012 most notably in the South East, with calls for restraint in usage. How would smarter water help in these situations? Water supply and wastewater manage- ment are clearly systemically linked – water is abstracted, treated, sometimes from waste- water, supplied to users and returns are made to sewers for treatment and discharge back to the environment. It is a cycle where the direct link between water supply and wastewater returns is largely offline from the natural environment: the flows are in pipes, tanks, sewers and treatment works. Flooding and drought are also linked to water supply and wastewater management, but in many ways more tangentially. First, there are systemic links, for example if there is a drought or a flood, abstraction and sup- ply can be more difficult; and heavy rain can cause sewer flooding because of the connec- tion between surface water drainage and foul drainage systems. In addition, there are indirect links between ecological health and water service uses of water. Smarter water would allow the various systems to be run in a more integrated way, so that decisions about how, where and when would be closely supported by knowl- edge. When is the best time to discharge treated effluent into a river to achieve maxi- mum dilutions? When should abstraction from groundwater take precedence over abstraction from a related river source? How should raw water be treated at lowest cost? When should the sewer running down a main street be cleaned to avoid blockages and flooding? And how should pressure be controlled to reduce leakage and excess con- sumption in various parts of a network? The benefits of smarter water would include the ability to optimise the use of assets – pipes, sewers, pumps, boreholes, treatment processes and discharge licences – to ensure the lowest cost and most effective service to consumers. It would allow systems and assets to be run closer to their limits of capacity and condition, so only what needs to be done to achieve the service lev- els required would be done, and then at the right time, with the right intensity and at the right cost. Smarter water would get it right. Smarter water is essentially about great strategic asset management: what are the assets; where are they; how are they per- forming; how are they supposed to be per- forming; what can they do; what will they need to do next week or next hour; what effects do underperformance have on ser- vices; what headroom is there in any system at any time and how can such headroom be used to reduce risk, preserve service, respond to crisis; what needs to be repaired, upgraded, replaced and when and how to maintain cost-effective service. To achieve truly smarter water, utilities need better knowledge of what is possible based on better information about their sys- tems, gathered at appropriate time steps, processed and presented in appropriate ways for decision making. Does it require more data acquisition and data analytics? Certainly, over time, sensors and monitors should become cheaper and more able to operate locally – already there are locally powered valves, which can shut off flows to areas in response to low demand – and bet- ter, more timely, data might be a significant part of the solution. Analytics can reveal previously unconsidered or unknown factors that relate to service delivery. Does water need to be smart? Making water smarter should enable lowest cost and best service to customers. But how to get it right and avoid unintended consequences? Mike Woolgar explains. Water poverty Defined as more than 3 per cent of income spent on water bills. It is estimated that a quarter of households are in this category (Ofwat, 2009/10 latest figures) Meter penetration England and Wales residential households = 40 per cent (Ofwat, 2013) Assets 1,000 service and impounding reservoirs 2,500 water treatment works 9,000 sewage treatment works 1,500 boreholes 600 river abstraction points 625,000km of sewers (Future Proofing UK Water Sector 2013) Key stAtistics on the WAter sector