Water is a scarce and valuable resource. Community expectations around water treatment, sewer networks and environmental management continue to increase.
Water treatment plants and infrastructure are often decades old and operate inefficiently, while water quality incidents are difficult to predict, costly and damaging to reputation. Operators often know there is potential for cost saving and efficiency gains but realising them and putting changes into practice is difficult.
Managing and operating ageing water treatment infrastructure typically relies on the experience and specialist skills of plant operators and staff, with limited resources for enhancing compliance, identifying cost savings and process improvements. However, advancements in what’s technologically possible are beginning to change the landscape in water asset management.
A digital twin is a virtual representation that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process. It can be used to view the status of the actual physical object, which provides a way to project physical objects into the digital world. An example of how digital twins are used to optimise machines is with the maintenance of power generation equipment such as power generation turbines, jet engines and locomotives.
Operational benefits of digital twins for water utilities and sewer networks
Digital twin technology is now available that combines water modelling with the power of machine learning. This produces insights that can be used by engineers, plant operators and asset managers at water utilities to improve both operational and environmental performance.
Plant and network operators are now using digital twins of their operations to:
- Model operational scenarios to improve capital and operational efficiencies with virtual representations. Operators are able to perform digital ‘what-if scenarios’ of processes and know water quality is compliant before releasing it into waterways.
- Get recommended daily emails on plant settings for water compliance with hour-by-hour forecasts for optimal plant settings over the next 24-hours to achieve operational and water quality goals.
- Monitor safety risks and performance across entire sewer networks while identifying potential areas of safety risk in the network due to sulfide and methane generation.
EVS Water Product Overview Video
Introducing EVS Water digital twin technology for complex infrastructure management
EVS Water uses a combination of machine learning and best-practice water modelling approaches consistent with Envirosuite’s philosophy of embedding the world’s leading science in technology that is useful for decision makers.
The platform offers digital twin that combines water modelling and machine learning. It’s a powerful solution for engineers, plant operators and asset managers to improve both operational and environmental performance.
Learn more about EVS Water here: https://envirosuite.com/platforms/water