Is your water data a stagnant pool or a powerful stream? Learn how a dedicated active water management platform can transform data into action, driving significant water savings and sustainability outcomes.
In today’s world, there are two dilemmas when it comes to efficient water management.
“We either don’t have enough data, or we don’t have enough action based on the data collected,” said Guenter Hauber-Davidson, Managing Director of WaterGroup, a leading provider of integrated water efficiency solutions across Australia.
Each scenario provides its own challenge, according to Hauber-Davidson. Not having enough data means organisations don’t have an evidence base for their decision-making processes, while not enough action means that the data being collected is going to waste.
A big part of this imbalance is that there are very specific demands on how a platform collects water usage information, displays it for analysis and makes it easy to understand. It also needs to provide the right insights into what corrective action should be taken if there is abnormal usage.
This is where a comprehensive, data-driven smart water management platform like UtiliOS is needed. It is designed by practitioners for practitioners. With its intuitive interface and powerful analytics, UtiliOS enables users to harness the full potential of digital metering and achieve significant water savings. WaterGroup has recognised the opportunity to integrate cutting-edge digital metering with a human touch and has received the IoT Alliance of Australia (IoTAA) Data Transformation Award. Through its work, WaterGroup and UtiliOS help create significant, tangible cost savings and sustainability outcomes.
A comprehensive solution for active water management
Such a platform needs to simplify complex data management processes by handling everything from data ingestion and cleansing to integration and analysis. This enables users to focus on deriving actionable insights without getting bogged down by technical details.
A user-friendly interface makes data retrieval and analysis a seamless experience, allowing users to access the information they need with just a few clicks. Furthermore, it must provide flexibility in analysis, enabling the combination of digital metering data with other data series for a more comprehensive understanding of water usage patterns.
UtiliOS is one of the leading solutions for smart water meter monitoring and device management.
“Unlike traditional data lakes or interactive data visualisation tools, you need a platform designed to deliver immediate value from the moment it is implemented”, said Hauber-Davidson.
The platform must also excel in device and fleet management. Through an intuitive, traffic light-based system, users should be able to efficiently monitor and manage devices, easily identifying issues and generating reports. The platform’s advanced alarms and alerts module lets users detect and prioritise abnormal water usage and leaks, ensuring timely interventions. Additionally, it needs to automate fleet and leak alert management, providing meaningful feedback that drives corrective actions and highlights water savings in clear, understandable terms, including related CO2 savings. UtiliOS ticks all of those boxes.
Proven success
WaterGroup has demonstrated the effectiveness of UtiliOS, having saved over 8 billion litres of water since 2017. This proven success makes it a reliable choice for scaling for larger residential smart water metering roll-outs by utilities. The platform’s graphical user interface (GUI), which includes geo-location and human-machine interface (HMI) capabilities, allows users to locate devices in the field or within facility diagrams, providing near real-time status updates.
Security and scalability are integral to its design. The platform features hierarchical access structures and a robust database that ensures data security while allowing for seamless scaling. A dedicated water management platform like UtiliOS should also include a network balancing model that automatically calculates addressable leakage, streamlining the process of identifying and correcting inefficiencies.
What’s needed next for active water management?
As water management demands continue to evolve, so must the platform. Significant enhancements should be planned, including integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically detect abnormal water usage patterns and diagnose device health. Hauber-Davidson expects these AI-driven insights to further enhance the efficiency and precision of WaterGroup’s AWARE Blue system, making water management with UtiliOS even more proactive.
In addition, WaterGroup expects more advanced water balancing and leak detection features to become available. They will differentiate between essential and non-essential water use, allowing for more accurate pricing and resource allocation. The setup and configuration process will also become more streamlined, further simplifying the user experience. AI-powered support, including ChatGPT-based help and documentation, will ensure users have the resources to fully leverage the platform’s capabilities.
Advantages of a dedicated platform
Compared to traditional data management tools like overall high-level, corporate-wide, all-integrated sustainability and reporting platforms, data lakes, or interactive data visualisation, a dedicated platform like UtiliOS offers several distinct advantages. Its user-friendly design ensures that anyone with the appropriate access can use it without requiring specialised skills. This ease of use extends to easy, intuitive interrogation of time series data, allowing users to perform flexible analysis on the fly without needing to wait for expert assistance.
Hauber-Davidson anticipates that many complex processes typically associated with data management, including data cleansing, ingestion, and transformation, will become automated.
“One should not have to spend time on that,” he said. “Data displayed ought to be reliable and dependable.”
This automation frees users from manual tasks and allows them to focus on more strategic activities. User journeys should be streamlined with an intuitive interface, making accessing critical tasks a one-click process.
It must also excel in alarm and reporting capabilities. Users need to be able to set up sophisticated alarms and receive automated reports, ensuring potential issues are addressed promptly. The platform’s scalability and reliability must have been proven across multiple applications before making it a trusted solution for a wide range of water management needs.
Proven expertise in active water management
UtiliOS has proven expertise as a water management platform built on industry expertise and continuous user-driven development. Whether managing a single site or an entire utility network, UtiliOS delivers the insights, automation, and support necessary to drive efficiency and achieve cost-effective, sustainable water savings.
“These are essential not only for when the next drought hits us but even more so today in our current cost of living crisis with an increasing pressure on reducing costs whilst also achieving ever more stringent sustainability goals”, said Hauber-Davidson.
