NewsNews – OpinionWater Breakthrough Challenge
August 1, 2024
This article was guest-written by Northumbrian Water Group, lead entrant of the Stream project, awarded funding in Water Breakthrough Challenge 2 and Water Breakthrough Challenge 3.
Access the Stream platform here.
Our climate is becoming increasingly volatile. Rising temperatures make it harder to manage water consumption, environmental incidents such as droughts and storms are more unpredictable, and floods are more frequent and severe.
Water companies and their stakeholders need to help address these challenges while also reassuring customers about the quality of the water in our rivers and taps, and demonstrating how they help protect people from the impact of environmental events, all whilst keeping bills low.
Innovation through collaboration
Stream exists to help people find, understand and access water company data. The vision is to unlock the potential of water data to benefit customers, society and the environment, by establishing data-sharing infrastructure to facilitate the trusted opening and sharing of water sector data.
The project has been awarded two rounds of funding from the Ofwat Innovation Fund: to develop a blueprint in 2022, and for full implementation in 2023. Alongside investment from UK water companies, this funding has enabled Stream to bring together over 100 specialists in open data and leading technical experts, including representatives from 16 of the 18 UK major water companies.
The launch of the proof-of-concept platform in December 2023 shared some initial data sets on water company boundaries, annual performance tables and historical drinking water quality sample data, to show how the platform would work. Users ranged from start-ups, academics, water companies, and individuals who are interested in helping the sector solve its challenges with data. Feedback and suggestions for improvement were gathered from these initial users to ensure best usability of the platform, with these learnings leading to the launch of the full Stream platform in April 2024. It built on the functionality of the MVP, introduced new features and data sets such as water consumption data and raw water storage level data.
An essential part of Stream is the community forum, enabling users to engage with each other, request new data and foster the sharing of ideas that spring from data analysis. Users are also taking part in advisory groups to identify further valuable use cases and datasets to publish. The platform’s following grows weekly by 20-30 people.
Importantly, the forum is a support network for anyone struggling to use Stream, and users can showcase how they are using data to deliver positive change. For example, data academies and students have been using published data with other data to develop and test their ability to find solutions to problems through data analysis. By developing skills using data to help solve water challenges, this is enabling the development of future talent for the sector.
What is open and shared data and what value can it bring?
Open data is data that anyone can access, use and share. Shared data must only be used with certain restrictions, such as who can use it and for what purpose. For example, data that includes confidential information will only be shared with authorised parties to be used for a specified purpose.
Whilst the concepts of opening and sharing data can seem complex, Stream has created an easily accessible, intuitive platform for both water companies who are publishing data and users, to deliver tangible, long-term value from the data being shared.
By working as a collective, Stream can facilitate the sharing of data to fuel insights and identify innovative solutions to key issues that could influence future regulation. It can do this faster and more efficiently than how it operates today; keeping pace with change and helping to improve service levels and secure a sustainable future for our UK waters.
For example, Stream is well placed to underpin the many catchment management initiatives running across the country to improve river health by providing trusted water sector data, prepared in a consistent and standardised way that makes it easy to join up with other datasets, like those held by the Environment Agency. By using Stream, water companies only need to publish the data once for anyone to use, instead of preparing and sharing data for each separate initiative.
Data accessibility
Through Stream, users can now easily find, access and understand data about the UK water sector. Stream works with the member water companies to publish data so that it can be easily joined with other data to uncover insights that weren’t known before, such as why certain events happen in certain locations or at certain times. Bringing more datasets together enables patterns to be spotted more easily.
Key to the success of opening up water data is the accessibility of the data itself, so the industry is working together to standardise how the data gets published – including methods for sensitive data to be shared in a safe way. Stream has brought together experts from inside and outside of the industry to devise a clear methodology for identifying and prioritising data publication.
Making an impact
We want Stream to have a lasting impact on the environment, society and our industry, by continuing to make data open and accessible, combining knowledge and insights, and bringing together experts to address some of the key challenges we face now and in the future.
We believe that the insights gained from data published on Stream will help drive productivity and provide new levels of innovation and transparency; building trust, enhancing service levels and helping to protect and improve our water and wastewater systems for generations to come.
By creating a framework for sharing data in a consistent and efficient way, Stream has removed historical barriers that made the opening and sharing of data difficult, enabling the industry and its stakeholders to work together to deliver further insights and solutions in areas of critical importance.
Find out more about the Stream project (phase 1 and phase 2).
