Presentation of the results from the Waternomics project for the European Utility Week 2016 by Sander Smit from BM-Change. Presentation shows preceived business value of the four pilots.
Keppel Ltd. 1Q 2024 Business Update Presentation Slides
The business value of a smart water system
1. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu
Project co-funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Program (Grant Agreement No. 619660)
THE BUSINESS ASPECTS, PERSPECTIVES AND FUTURE FOR SMART WATER
SANDER SMIT | BM-CHANGE
3. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu3
WATERNOMICS PROJECT
▶ Timeline: February 2014 – January 2017
▶ Consortium: 9 partners (3 Universities, 4 SME’s, 1 airport,
1 municipality)
▶ Countries: 4 (Ireland, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands)
▶ Pilots: 4 (Ireland, Italy and Greece)
▶ Member of the ICT4Water cluster
▶ Co-funded by the European Commission
7. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu7
PILOT 1: LINATE AIRPORT
Pilot area 1: DMA6, Freight & Maintenance
14 buildings, 300 staff
Pilot area 2: Terminal building
Two public displays
Management dashboard
8. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu8
PILOT 1: LINATE AIRPORT
Valued most:
Leakage detection
Simulation of renovation strategies
Visualisation of network
Awareness quiz on public display
11. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu11
PILOT 2: NUI GALWAY
Increased awareness
Silent faults diagnosed
Smart Water for educational purposes
Difficult to prioritise for management
Valued most:
But:
18. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu18
Control X X
Maintenance X X
Simulation X X
Decision support X
Fair billing X X
Awareness X X X X
Education X X X X
Reputation X X X
Cost reduction X X
Energy reduction X
VALUE OF SMART WATER
22. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu22
CONCLUSION
Waternomics shows that a Smart Water System for consumers does create
end-user value
For Smart Water Systems to be successful they need to be horizontally
aligned, covering drinking water and wastewater systems and vertically
aligned with building management systems and energy management
systems.
Smart Water propositions need to be tailored to the specific needs of
customer segments. No one-size-fits-all solutions.
23. @WATERNOMICS_EU www.waternomics.eu
Project co-funded by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework
Program (Grant Agreement No. 619660)
THANK YOU
For more information:
www.waternomics.eu | sander@bm-change.nu | www.ict4water.eu
Notas del editor
Waternomics is addressing the drinking water scarcity issue and investigates how information technology can help people to manage water more efficiently. Our basic idea is that by providing timely and actionable information about water usage and water availability, people will make better informed decisions and will reduce their water consumption.
Waternomics takes an holistic approach. It was recognised that pushing smart water technology was not enough to have people adopt such systems. The project therefore not only looks at the hardware, sensors and meters, and software systems necessary to collect and analyse information on water. The project also considers governance models, business models, value propositions, training modules for users and a methodology that guides businesses and households with the implementation of a water information system. The developed technologies and methodologies are tested and validated in four different pilot in three places.
Zooming in the four pilots you can see we have one pilot is at Linate airport near the city of Milan, two pilots in Ireland, a University building and a secondary school and a fourth pilot is done in collaboration with households in the municipality of Thermi in Greece. This way the project has access to a broad range of end-users and is able to compare the performance of the water information system under different climatological circumstances.
The first pilot we look into is at the Linate airport, one of the major airports near Milan. The airport is originally build in the 1930’s with major reconstructions in the 1950’s and 1980’s. In 2015 Linate welcomed almost 10 million passengers and handled almost a 100.000 landings and take-offs of airplanes. The airport is operated by SEA, who also manages Malpensa airport.
The Waternomics project did two things at the airport. First, a specific section of the airport where freight and maintenance activities take place, was equipped with flow meters and sensors, allowing detailed monitoring of this part of the airports water network. This section included 14 buildings and is the working place for 300 staff members from various companies. A dashboard application provided management and maintenance staff access to the water network data, simulations and information.
Secondly, in the terminal building two public displays were installed in the departure hall. With these displays, waiting passengers were invited to do a quiz with water related questions, receive water saving tips or watch an informative video.
From the initial feedback and from the usage statistics from the applications we can see that management valued most the level of control they gained over their network. Leakages were detected and abnormal use was taken action upon. Also highly valued was the possibility to run simulations of adaptations in the water network. This resulted in better informed decision making for renovation work on the water network. Management was better capable of deciding which investment gave the highest benefits in terms of water and energy saving.
From the two public displays, the quiz turned out most popular.
The second pilot involves the Engineering Building on the campus of the National University of Ireland in Galway. This is a fairly new building, delivered in 2011, equipped with modern installations, a rainwater harvesting system and a modern building management system. In the building you can find class rooms, laboratories, offices and a cafeteria. The building gives home to a 1,000 students and 100 staff members.
Although this building was already equipped with sub-level water meters, we added 11 additional meters to be able to measure water usage on application level. Sensors and installation works have deliberately placed in sight so anyone who was curious what these boxes were about, could have a look and use the QR code to get more information from the web. Also here an interactive public display was installed in the central hall, showing real-time information about the buildings water consumption and related contextual information. Water usage data from the building and the application platform were used in classes and workshops to offer students the opportunity to work on a case study closely related to their personal life. Finally, water usage information was made available to management through a dedicated dashboard.
The public display caused a lot of discussion amongst staff and students and contributed to the increase of awareness of water management issues. Also the use of local data and the development of new applications by students was appreciated. Management valued the silent fault that was detected by the system. It turned out that a blocked piped caused the rainwater harvesting system to malfunction and consume large amounts of drinking water.
The building from the secondary school Colaiste na Coiribe is even newer then the engineering building. Also located in Galway and only delivered in October 2015 means that the building was constructed during the first phase of the project. This enabled us to extend the planned metering plan with seven new inline meters. The school is now fully operational and gives home to 500 students in the age of 12 to 18 and 40 staff members. Wat is special about this school is that it teaches in the Irish language and promotes the Irish culture wherever possible.
Also in this building a public display and a management dashboard have been installed. Next to that, lessons in water and water management were given by Waternomics staff, making use of the data and applications of the building management system
The main interest from management was that the smart water system enabled them to profile the school as a green and environmental aware school, complying with Irish regulation in the area of sustainability. Students particularly liked the lessons and workshops which made use of the water consumption data from their immediate environment.
Finally, our fourth pilot was set-up in the municipality of Thermi, near Thessaloniki in Greece where 10 households in Thermi participated in the pilot.
Each house was equipped with detailed metering of water consumption. Family members could trace their water consumption on application level and see how much water was used by the washing machine, shower, toilet etc. Next to monitoring water usage, information about water availability, news, water saving tips and a quiz was provided to the households by the means of a dashboard application.
Participants from the pilot indicated that they valued the new insights in which applications used the most water. It was an eye opener for one of the participants that the kitchen tap used more water compared with the dishwasher. It turned out he washed the dishes manually after each meal. Another element that was appreciated was the support for changing behaviour. Each month the participants would receive a challenge together with tips and recommendations for how to reach this new goal. By sharing comparative water consumption information, participants were encouraged to improve their performance.
Summarising, we can see that the Waternomics information platform generates value for end-users in any different forms. All pilots show an increased awareness of water usage and an increased knowledge level about water availability and consumption by the involved people. For the airport and the schools having a smart water system is a way to differentiate from competition and strengthen their brand image. What is striking is that reduction of water consumption is not ranked highly on the list of perceived benefits. Furthermore, each pilot seems to have its own set of benefits and drivers for adopting a smart water system.
The results we’ve seen are in line with discussions we had with external organisations about the adoption of a smart water system in their business. In discussions with the Dutch Ministry of Defence, we have talked the use of smart water systems in their field bases in order to reduce the water footprint of their bases. Their main driver for reducing water consumption was to decrease logistical movements since all drinking water has to be delivered by air and or road transport. In a second case, we talked to Simaxx, a provider of smart building solutions, who collects all available data from an office building and uses this data to generate recommendations for building management. Key drivers are reducing operational costs while maintaining a good level of comfort for the inhabitants of the building.
The uptake of smart water systems in the end-user domain will increase demand for information from other, currently isolated, parts of the water cycle. For example, in order to facilitate educational applications or awareness campaigns, information about water quality and water availability is required. Therefore it is foreseen that information systems from the different domains will become interoperable and will adhere to specific communication standards. The growth of smart water applications in the consumer domain may come from newcomers in the water industry, with information companies like Google, Facebook or Apple. All of these companies want to collect as much data as possible about the current users of their products and services. These information companies act faster and are more customer oriented then todays water utilities and waste water companies and it will be interesting to see how this market develops over time.
A second trend is the uptake of smart services for consumers in all kinds of domains like energy, transport, logistics, security or home automation. From an end-user perspective it is undesirable to have separate applications or each of these services and it ca be expected that services from different domains will be bundled. Think for example of utilities that provide water, energy and telecom or internet services and who manage the metering, billing and all other customer facing interactions while the actual delivery of water, energy, telephony or internet is managed by the traditional utilities. Especially the connection of smart water services with the energy domain will led to an increased integration of water and energy services. Vertical integration of smart water services with other domains like energy or telecom can be expected.
Summarising, we can conclude from the Waternomis pilots that smart water systems do generate end-user value which is an opportunity for utilities and service providers to design sustainable business around it.
Second, we have seen that different end-users are triggered by different features of a smart water system. As a result we can say that while the underlying technology might be very similar for different types of end-users, the value propositions will differ and need to be designed specifically for each segment.
And finally, to make the most out of them, smart water systems need to be integrated horizontally, with drinking and wastewater systems, as well as vertically, with energy management systems in order to create maximum end-user value.