Stream

July 23, 2024

breakthrough-2 water-breakthrough-challenge winners

Key information:

Led by: Northumbrian Water

Partners:  AWG Group, Thames Water, Severn Trent Water, Scottish Water, SES Water, United Utilities, South West Water, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Southern Water, Yorkshire Water, Sia Partners, Aiimi, Open Data Institute, Costain

Competition: Breakthrough 2: Transform

Funding awarded: £880,318

The vision for the Stream project is to unlock the potential of water data to benefit customers, society, and the environment. The project seeks to implement technology and processes that could remove the barriers (such as technical complexity and governance structure) to sharing water company data. This will enable data sharing around vital concerns such as leakage, climate change and vulnerable customers, both internally to the sector, and externally too. The open data approach could help ensure water security and quality for all now and for future generations.

The project worked with 11 water companies, alongside external partners to accelerate discussions around what was needed to implement these processes to enable responsible data sharing. The output from the project was a blueprint setting out the design for the capabilities needed to bring the vision to life (this will be available at spring-innovation.co.uk in future).

The initiative has recently been awarded further funding through Ofwat’s Water Breakthrough Challenge 3, which will enable the building of the platform. The goal of the team, which now includes additional partners Icebreaker One and Wessex Water, is to make the first data sets available by the end of the year. Through Stream 2, the team plans to continuously develop the data-sharing platform over the next 18 months, adding more features to enable a diverse range of use cases. A small group of representatives from individual water companies and outside organisations, the Advisory Group for Market Needs and Use Cases, will prioritise the most valuable use cases to be delivered through the pipeline of cases. The most valuable cases will be assessed in the context of their value to society, the environment and/or the economy.

In the water sector, we’re on the front line of climate change. We’re experiencing its impacts both in terms of how we manage our wastewater networks and how we manage the water resources to ensure we have enough, quality drinking water. To resolve that with big engineering solutions is costly, and carbon-intensive which contributes to the climate impact already happening. Putting all the technology and processes in place to share relevant data enables the water sector to spend money in the most efficient way it can, and ensure we’re making the best use of the water network and infrastructure we have at the moment.

We’re super interested in hearing from new potential partners, both from within and outside of the sector, who are trying to grapple with water and environmental challenges and therefore could benefit from having access to water industry data sets. It really has the potential to be invaluable in ways that we’re even unaware of as yet. The Ofwat Innovation Fund has been a critical enabler for the progress Stream was able to make in the last 6-9 months and we are really excited to be embarking on the next phase.

Andrew Myers, Lead Architect, Northumbrian Water