By Thomas Grand, COO, Samp
How do companies overcome the dual challenge of tackling climate issues and meeting the need for massive infrastructure investment? Thomas Grand, COO, Samp, says digital is the way forward.
Access to water, for both drinking and industry purposes, relies on water companies effectively managing their assets and infrastructure. But this process is suffering from a range of growing challenges due to an increasingly volatile climate.
The climate crisis is causing major disruption to water utilities across the globe. The theme of this year’s World Water Day, for instance, was ‘Glacier Preservation’. The melting of ice is triggering an increasingly unpredictable water cycle, with more floods, droughts and rising sea levels. Such effects are also being caused by changing patterns in rainfall.
What’s more, for water companies attempting to provide freshwater, not only are temperature fluctuations and extreme weather events changing water quality, but also growing contamination challenges like PFAS. All of this is creating a flood of stress on managing water infrastructure. And it means water companies need to adapt their management strategies and invest in climate resilient infrastructure.
The investment surge
The pressures of the climate crisis and previous years of underinvestment have created an ageing water structure that is creaking, leading to more regular occurrences of harmful events like sewage discharging into rivers. These factors, combined with a growing population and infrastructure requirements, are driving an unprecedented era of investment in the water industry.
Now, new investment in the UK water sector is set to quadruple over the next five years. In December, the water regulator Ofwat approved a £104bn upgrade for companies “to transform performance, ensure supplies for future generations and to deliver cleaner rivers and seas”. This also includes nearly £12bn allocated to cutting spills from storm overflows by 45% by 2030.
A large part of this investment is being driven by environmental commitments and regulatory pressure. The Environment Agency has secured the largest ever environmental commitment from water companies “to improve water infrastructure to secure future supply, as well as improving habitats and biodiversity”.
These investments represent a great opportunity to future-proof water infrastructure and adopt the technology and tools to ensure a climate resilience and continued supply of clean drinking water. But all this investment is also being funded by increases to consumer bills.
So, if water companies can find new ways to manage their infrastructure efficiently and optimise the management of their industrial sites, not only can they improve operations but also reduce costs over the longer term.
The AI asset
The water sector is made up of a wide-ranging web of infrastructure. The journey of delivering clean water to people requires water moving through a utility network including desalination plants, drinking water production and distribution facilities, and heating and cooling systems.
To manage this complexity of infrastructure, digital tools have become an essential asset. In particular, the use of digital twin technology, which involves everything from 3D scanning to AI and advanced web technologies, allows water companies to replicate physical assets digitally, integrating diverse data sources to provide a unified and interactive visualisation of their industrial site.
Yet one of the key issues in the industry is that technical data, such as technical drawings or equipment lists, do not align with the reality of the assets on site. This is because sites are continually evolving, and when changes are made on site, this data is not updated. There is also the problem that assets without technical information may not be captured or replicated by the digital twin.
It’s a crucial gap – but one that AI is seamlessly overcoming. AI can automatically act as the missing link and connect digital assets to their corresponding technical information, thereby providing a truthful representation of the on-site reality. Moreover, it can analyse the 3D digital replica of the site to identify any industrial objects and generate an inventory list. These breakthroughs are industry firsts and can transform how water companies manage their sites.
Shared Reality solution
For these technologies to have a practical use, they have to be accessible by all stakeholders involved in maintenance and operations projects, from engineers to subcontractors. It’s by working from the same single source of truth that the water sector can build efficient, sustainable and resilient water management practices.
One such approach is to create a Shared Reality. This is a collaborative digital workspace accessible online that all teams can work on. Using 3D scans of actual facilities and AI, it provides an accurate and dynamic representation of assets that updates regularly to include changes made on site. Imperatively, it means everyone is working off the same information, and the reliability and accuracy of data can improve factors such as safety, maintenance, operations and energy efficiency.
By having an in-depth overview of water facilities and insights on actual site conditions, water companies can establish a much better understanding of their site’s infrastructure to inform strategy on various projects and initiatives.
The future of water
From extreme weather events to contamination challenges, water companies are contending with a whole range of modern-day obstacles to operations on site. Major investment is now being rolled out to improve the infrastructure in the sector and this will require a whole range of new projects and maintenance initiatives.
As such, the sustained pace of efficient modernisation and expansion of utility networks and plants is essential to meeting these goals. But with such a complex network of facilities to oversee, the use of digital tools and AI are becoming essential assets to meeting this imperative, providing a shared reality for all parties to collaborate on.
Looking ahead, water companies need to consider how they can create a resilient system that is affordable for the environment, their end users, and the sector at large. AI will play an integral role in building that future.
