Using digital brains to create a water sector fit for the future

As water companies modernise and adapt the UK’s ageing infrastructure to create a utility fit for the future, digital solutions such as IoT technology and artificial intelligence will be key. Writing for Utility Week Capgemini’s head of technology Graham Upton discusses how best to harness digital solutions to transform the infrastructure of water companies.

The challenge of modernising our ageing, and in some cases crumbling, legacy assets is as huge as ever, both in scale and cost. World events and economic turbulence are making investment decisions even more difficult. Energy and utilities businesses, and their regulators, face previously unheard-of levels of scrutiny and comment, not all of which are informed.

And there is also the foreshadowing of net zero goals that utilities companies need to be aware of when making investment decisions. According to Capgemini’s 25^th edition of its annual World Energy Markets Observatory (WEMO) report, despite energy transition investments hitting record levels in 2022, growth is still far below what is needed to achieve net zero by 2050. The onus is on utilities companies to dramatically ramp up their investment in renewable solutions to improve assets and reduce their carbon footprint.

But while replacing our Victorian infrastructure will take decades and huge levels of additional investment, digital technologies are already providing opportunities to make significant improvements in the performance and sustainability of our existing assets – increasingly operating in sync with the connected engineer.

So which digital solutions should utilities companies invest in now to sustainability transform their infrastructure in both the short and long term?

Taking to the skies to monitor water quality

A major difficulty for today’s utility companies is managing water quality levels in the face of storm overflow discharges. Over the past year, the media has covered the increase in sewage discharges frequently and public backlash has been fierce. Typically, when sewage treatment works capacity is exceeded due to heavy rainfall, combined sewer overflows are permitted and water companies are allowed to discharge excess water into seas and rivers. The danger here is that sometimes the sewage isn’t diluted enough with rainwater to not cause severe drops in water quality, which could damage wildlife and make previously swimmable areas dangerous. However, a number of technologies already exist that are helping the industry take back control of this spiraling issue.

Sensors in rivers are being deployed to transmit live water quality readings to smart control centres for assessment and more immediate remedial action and is still very much reactive. Also, by using drones with high resolution thermal imaging cameras, utility companies can now scan water courses and detect changes in water quality before any contaminate spreads too far through the system. Where previously it would have been a challenge getting such data from hard-to-reach parts of the country, due to gaps in radio coverage, a combination of the latest IoT technologies, including low earth orbit satellites, are now able to plug those gaps and provide connectivity for digital communications in remote areas.

Similar approaches are being used to assess sea water quality, deploying multiple technologies to pinpoint the causes, effects and responsibilities of events that result in excess wastewater discharges – and the possible contamination of our beaches and coastlines.

Intelligent control centres acting as digital brains

Another solution utility companies are looking into is connecting their operations landscape using IoT technology. By adding sensors to and monitoring the state of the existing infrastructure across the network, companies can begin to create a digital twin of their infrastructure – ingesting huge quantities of live data that can in turn tell them where optimisations could be made to improve energy efficiency and decrease waste, providing a more sustainable future.

While digital twins were originally designed to support human decision making, in the future, IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and automation will combine to enable Intelligent Control Centres (ICCs) to make thousands of informed, automated decisions, across the network, all at once.  ICCs will act as digital brains, continuously scanning the data from a utility company’s infrastructure to identify emerging trends, patterns or anomalies and automatically take appropriate action, such as remotely opening sluice gates, shutting down faulty pumps, or scheduling a site visit by a connected engineer (still a human, for now). This will in-turn better enable utilities companies to manage their carbon footprint, for example remotely reducing power to systems that are not needed, or locating where water leaks or power surges are occurring within the system and pre-emptively fixing these issues to avoid unnecessary wastage of resources.

Alongside managing the reactive needs of the live operational environment, ICCs will also analyse longer-term trends and then combine them with historical records and external data sources such as weather forecasts, wind speeds, and tidal patterns to suggest more proactive, preventative measures across the ecosystem, multiplying the impacts and benefits.

For instance, if an ICC predicts that a severe storm will hit the UK, utilities companies can prepare for flooding events by evacuating storm tanks earlier or mitigating power outages caused by downed power lines in advance, greatly improving the response time for engineers to get out and fix the problem. Alternatively, if you have a greater understanding of tidal pattern and wind speeds then utilities companies can use this information to position their renewable technologies more effectively to improve the storage of the energy they capture – e.g., rotating wind turbines to better catch the wind direction each day.  AI can also be used to better optimise the increasing number of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and sewer gates further mitigating environmental impacts to the surrounding environment.

Quick wins and long-term investment confidence

All-in-all, this newly-found data-driven digital approach will produce dual dividends – delivering quick wins right now and buying time to ensure the successful long-term replacement of our aging, legacy infrastructure.

The scale of the investment required by energy and utilities businesses to create the critical national infrastructure of the future makes it essential that they not only maximise the value of what data science and digital technologies can deliver today, but also anticipate and build in the next generation of technical developments.