Integrated Water Cycle Issues and Challenges

May 24, 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.

One of the main challenges we encounter is the aging infrastructure, as the distribution networks that are currently installed are quite old and, in many cases, obsolete. This also leads to a series of problems that directly impact other challenges in the sector, which are a direct consequence of their poor condition, such as reducing operational costs and minimizing leakage.

Asset and data management are therefore proposed today as a possible solution to minimize the impact of the aging of this infrastructure, for which ease of access to data and connectivity with different sources of information, as well as being able to access the data in an agile and robust way, will be key.

On the other hand, massive data processing is another important aspect to be taken into account. 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 big DATA HUB of information. At the core we have the data processing, debugging, generation of calculations (from the simplest to the most complex), storage of signals and processes related to artificial intelligence (machine learning algorithms that build consumption models and predictions or early detection of anomalies).

The connectors or drivers are responsible for acquiring the measurement information and contextualizing it with the inventory and the company’s objectives. From here, the platform offers a series of tools to build the different use cases, which will provide value to users and, ultimately, to the efficient management of the complete water cycle.

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 the framework of Energy Efficiency we have different aspects such as demand prediction according to meteorology or automatic pump optimization. Another example of a use case is the carbon footprint. The Sustainable Development Goals, or also called SDGs, were established in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly with the intention of “achieving a better and more sustainable future for all”. It consists of 17 goals and number 13 corresponds to “Climate Action”, so this point is and will be paramount in the strategies and policies of both countries and society in general, as well as for companies and organizations worldwide. Having a measurement and analysis tool that allows water reuse, carbon footprint measurement and other strategies to minimize climate change will therefore be of great importance.

Conclusions

In summary, we can talk about the importance of surrounding yourself with good technology partners that accompany you throughout the process of digitization of the business, allowing improvements at all levels of companies.

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.