Water scarcity is often described as one of the most pressing or high-priority threats to the water cycle. Therefore, modernizing the management of the water cycle to achieve more sustainable and efficient water management is a priority.
As a result, the water industry is using data to address challenges such as maintenance, water safety, asset health, and operational efficiency. Data helps transform what happens in a facility into knowledge that allows us to make better decisions.
It is necessary to undertake a complete modernization of the water cycle in order to move towards a more efficient and sustainable management of water.
Technologies and innovation are evolving rapidly and continue to support a number of water resource management activities, including:
- Overall assessment and monitoring of water resources and hydrological processes.
- Conservation, recovery, and reuse of water resources.
- Adaptation of infrastructures.
- Cost reduction in treatment and distribution processes.
- Efficiency of water supply delivery and use.
- Access to safe water and sanitation.
In an environment with a generally obsolete infrastructure, there are three main points as the basis of all of them:
Communication
With the existing technology and the upcoming technology expected to be deployed, there is no problem in providing telecommunications services to remote and isolated facilities or to meter remote reading deployments.
Both the NB-IoT standard, 5G or other IoT communications technologies that operate in open, license-free radio frequency bands, such as LoRaWAN, are being promoted, and their development involves the deployment of equipment at the repetition points.
Data analysis
The possibility of having real-time information on the essential parameters of water quality, captured flows, etc. is essential for the management of the entire subsequent system.
Knowing the main hydraulic variables of the system (flows, pressures, etc.) that allow a correct management of the distribution network and with it, prevent and detect as quickly as possible possible breakages, leaks or water losses associated with the network.
Integration
One of the main challenges that utilities have to deal with is integration. Data acquisition systems may be obsolete or insufficiently documented, and may produce data formats that are incompatible with each other.
As a result, parallel systems are developed and the data collected by each cannot be cross-processed. A key need in all areas related to water is the promotion of integration and further development of intersectoral systems, understanding and collaboration.
Professionals in each sector need to know and understand more about the thinking and methods applied by other sectors, in order to continue innovating in a more collaborative and operation-oriented way.
Decision making
All this with a clear ultimate goal: to make better decisions.
- Collect the events of the facilities and record them to turn them into data.
- Contextualize and process them so that they become information.
- Analyze and present the appropriate information so that it becomes knowledge. With this knowledge, decisions can be made and applied.
- That this entire process is carried out with sufficient quality: the collection of data, its communication and integration, is critical for the decisions taken to be of quality.
“Knowledge consists of contextualized information, which is based on processed, organized, structured and presented data so that it is meaningful and useful.”
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