December 14, 2022
innovation innovation-in-water-challenge resilience water-sector winnersClimate change and population growth are putting increasing pressure on water resources across the UK. In a report published by the Committee on Climate Change, it was suggested that if no action is taken, there could be a potential gap in water availability of up to 2.7 billion litres of water per day by 2050 in England and Wales. At the same time, more heavy rainfall and the way land is used are putting increasing strain on our wastewater infrastructure and causing pollution in our water sources.
The way that water companies plan, deliver and finance services affects all current and future customers’ water and wastewater services. The impact of disruptions to services on customers, the environment, the economy, and communities can be significant. It is therefore vital that services remain resilient over the long term.
Water companies are taking action to future-proof their services. But new innovations could help them understand resilience and infrastructure risks better – and find better solutions that are more resilient, more efficient, greener and deliver more benefits to customers, communities, and the environment.
Want to spark your next #WaterBrightIdea to sustainably strengthen the long-term operational resilience of the water sector and safeguard water customers and the environment? Read through the below case studies from three of the winning projects from the Innovation in Water Challenge. To keep up-to-date and get the latest information on when the next rounds of the Innovation Fund competitions are set to open, visit our website or sign up to our newsletter.
Although we rarely think about it, sewers are vital to today’s society. To maintain their performance, they must be regularly assessed and maintained. Historically, this assessment has been in the hands of skilled inspectors, who must perform a repetitive and time-consuming process, painstakingly identifying the smallest defects in pipes.
The AI & Sewer Defect Analysis project, led by United Utilities, in partnership with Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water), Scottish Water, Severn Trent Water, Thames Water, Water Research Centre, and Yorkshire Water Services, aims to considerably improve this process.
By gathering a wide range of image data from partner water companies’ CCTV, the project will enable AI to recognise defects in pipe networks. As a result, improved AI models/software will:
Overall, using AI to identify sewer defects will allow considerable benefits to network performance, which will reduce impacts to customers and the environment caused by sewer failures.
Using cloud-based AI technology to code CCTV footage is expected to reduce the time it takes to survey a kilometre of pipe by approximately 20%. For consumers, this will result either in:
From a societal perspective, there are also direct benefits of:
While CCTV is already in operation in sewer networks, the current software is restricted by the images available to train the algorithms. This project will develop the first open-source training dataset of its kind, paving the way for future innovation and development across the water sector, and beyond.
The water companies will collaborate to collect shared data while connecting with AI software providers to understand how they effectively identify those images and categorise them. The partners will also establish connections between the water sector and the wider infrastructure industry:
Working across sectors will create a functional training dataset that will move AI software forward not only in the UK, but globally. A more human, physical and digital system will be developed which can be adapted to known and unknown future challenges, including climate change and population growth. This will ensure that wastewater assets are maintained for the long-term providing economic, social and environmental value.
This project is now complete, and the dataset can be found on Spring’s Knowledge Transfer Library.
Unchecked carbon emissions are one of the most important factors of climate change worldwide. Recognising this, the water sector in England and Wales has pledged to continue to reduce the capital carbon and costs of the assets they build and reach net-zero operational emissions by 2030. By joining forces in this way, the sector expects to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 million tonnes.
Enabling Whole Life Carbon Design will empower the sector to move from purely capital and operational carbon accounting (the measurement of capital and operational carbon footprints) to true whole-life carbon cost management.
The project will deliver digital visualisation tools that truly put carbon at the heart of both design and governance decision-making processes. This approach will deliver time, cost and carbon savings throughout a project’s lifecycle and support the sector to reduce customer costs and deliver benefits for the environment.
The whole concept is completely new for the water industry, but there are three specific facets to this innovation:
1: the creation of a cohesive whole-life carbon dataset;
2: the link between carbon and cost datasets in one tool, and;
3: the connection between dataset and a BIM (Building Information Modelling) environment to illustrate carbon hot spots, making it easier to interpret data.
The methodology and database template will be shared with the rest of the UK water industry and its wider value chain to enable clear decisions based on data insights and visualisations.
This is an excellent way to considering multiple possible solutions during the design process to best target carbon hotspots and achieve reductions. This approach will also better engage design teams than through standalone datasets and enable them to interpret and act on data quicker. This will help to create wider societal benefit by facilitating the delivery of more sustainable solutions.
Providing governance groups with clear, visual data on the carbon cost intensities of solutions will enable them to:
This project has the real potential to deliver benefits not just to the UK water sector but internationally as well. The methodology, tools and processes that will be developed can be tailored to any sector and any project, irrespective of location or size.
Lead water company for the project, Anglian Water, advises others looking to get involved in future rounds of the Innovation Fund to seize the opportunity! Harnessing the power of collaboration across sectors is the only way to truly begin to tackle the huge challenges the water sector is facing.
At Anglian Water, they have seen first-hand how ambitious targets can disrupt established practice, drive innovation, and significantly reduce costs and environmental impacts.
During extended dry periods or drought, the UK water sector can struggle to meet the demand for water. Using real-time monitoring and control solutions, the Smarter Tanks to build a resilient network project will explore how to best monitor drinking water and rainwater storage tanks to understand if more water can be stored when needed most.
The opportunity to implement smart water tank control into existing infrastructure will:
A key outcome of the project will be the development of a one-page business model for each smart tank use case, with supporting evidence gathered from workshops, desktop research and pilot installations to help scale the propositions tested. This will lay the groundwork for other companies or providers to adopt the concept if value is identified through successful proof of concept installations.
Adopting this truly open approach will enable the solution trialled during the project to be deployed not only more widely in the UK, but also further afield. Control philosophies (i.e. descriptions of how and when to top up a water tank) will be evaluated in the study and can be adapted, assessed, and manipulated further by others. Such projects could include:
This would benefit customers and the environment in the long term by making the most efficient and sustainable use of existing infrastructure than ever before.
Affinity Water, the project’s lead organisation, would advise people considering entering future rounds of the competitions to ensure their value proposition is easy to understand with a clear view of how it will benefit customers and/or the environment. It is important to articulate why the project is different to what activity is already taking place in the sector and how it can be shared and scaled-up.
Affinity Water also encourages other water companies to form cross-sector partnerships where possible and appropriate.
