Month: May 2022

As many of us already know, information technologies improve management, increase efficiency, reduce losses in supply networks and advance sustainable development goals.

Managing water resources and water services effectively and efficiently remains a major challenge in many OECD member and partner countries, while pressure on water resources continues to increase.

The OECD Environmental Outlook 2050 identifies the main challenges for water management:

• Increased competition for access to water
  (due to population and economic growth)
  
• Continued need to expand access to safe drinking water and sanitation in many parts of the world and to maintain water services in others
  
• Declining water quality
  
• Deterioration of groundwater supplies
  
• The threat posed by climate change

“80% of wastewater returns to the ecosystem without being treated or reused” (UNESCO, 2017).

It is for all these reasons that great challenges arise for us when addressing an Operational Intelligence strategy with our clients in the water sector.

A major challenge is the aging, often obsolete, infrastructure, leading to increased operational costs and leakage issues.

Asset and data management can minimize the impact of aging infrastructure. Easy data access and connectivity with various sources are crucial. Agile and robust data access is essential.

On the other hand, we must consider massive data processing as another important aspect. Our challenge is to solve the problem of controlled management of the massive ingestion of information, its contextualization and the analytical capacity to establish the most appropriate strategies, especially on the operational side.

Information sharing will also be a key aspect of the sector. The different departments of our companies increasingly need good coordination so that data can arrive easily and efficiently in real time, speeding up decision-making, improving productivity and performance.

Finally, despite being in a world of high connectivity and process automation, there is still manual data, so the tools must be able to integrate these data, as well as to debug and treat them and then incorporate them into the system as another signal of the same.

CIC as a Technology Partner

We see the Operational Intelligence Platform as a central data hub. Its core functions include data processing, debugging, and calculations. It also stores signals and processes AI-related data, such as machine learning algorithms for consumption models, predictions, and anomaly detection.

The connectors or drivers acquire measurement information and contextualize it with the company’s inventory and objectives. The platform then offers tools to build various use cases, adding value to users and ensuring efficient water cycle management.

The use cases can be general in the entire water value chain or specific as we can see in the following infographic on Operational Intelligence as a driving force for digital transformation.

In Energy Efficiency, we consider aspects like demand prediction based on weather and automatic pump optimization. Another use case is the carbon footprint. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established in 2015 by the UN General Assembly to ensure a sustainable future. There are 17 goals, with number 13 being “Climate Action,” making it crucial for countries, societies, companies, and organizations. A tool for water reuse, carbon footprint measurement, and other climate change strategies is essential for effective policies.

Conclusions

In summary, it’s crucial to have good technology partners during business digitization. They enable improvements at all company levels.

If you have been left wanting to know more, we leave you access to the following webinar: Digitalization of the integral water cycle. Towards a sustainable management.