How data and insights will enable the evolution of the digitally smart water utility
South Africa is no different and experiences some of these challenges more acutely than other countries. Fortunately, technology is available that can assist in resolving these challenges and improving operations significantly as well as, importantly, service delivery.
Focusing on the African water sector - investment in this emerging market is booming, and as economies across the continent experience rapid growth, demand is outstripping the ability to supply. The delicate balance between supply and demand is progressively being felt in many countries, including South Africa, where limited water resources combined with massive growth in demand and an increasingly urbanised population are putting pressure on water and waste-water infrastructure.
The outcome of this has been a growing number of interruptions to water supply as much-needed upgrades to the existing water utilities infrastructure are delivered. In addition, the rising cost of operations and increased consumer demand have created a highly challenging environment for water utility providers. Addressing these challenges requires a much smarter approach to using data and sophisticated analytics technologies to deliver greater insight, improved performance and enhanced efficiency - all of which are essential for aligning supply and demand.
Predictive analytics and intelligent IT solutions
Improving operational efficiency is one of the most crucial aspects to ensuring effective water utility service delivery, as this represents a significant cost. Predictive analytics and intelligent IT solutions can now assist utility providers to reduce costs by enabling them to forecast demand, or by understanding asset condition and criticality in a manner that would enable them to address potential supply or service interruptions before they become a crisis. The accurate assessment of asset risks also allows for proactive or predictive maintenance of the infrastructure, which, in turn, reduces the need for emergency works and thereby reduces the spending on contracted and hired services.
Another important aspect to improving service delivery is ensuring environmentally sustainable operations and reducing the environmental impact of adverse incidents, if any. This is essential not only from a corporate responsibility perspective, but also for ensuring improved customer service. Water leakage is one of the key areas that needs to be addressed, as it impacts on both carbon footprint and efficiency. Using analytics solutions, subtle changes, such as water pressure reduction, can be monitored over time, which can help alert providers about potential water leaks. This enables them to be repaired far more quickly, improving customer service and reducing water wastage. Other common environmental considerations are the quality of water, pollution events and so on.
Smarter analytical capabilities
Leveraging the power of smarter analytical capabilities has enabled water utility providers to make more accurate, fact-based decisions, which, in turn, has enabled improved performance, better customer service and enhanced operational efficiency. Some of the areas that can be addressed using accurate data and insight include identifying water main burst events, interruptions to supply, low pressure and the time taken to address these issues. In addition, service requests and calls for the same incident can be more effectively grouped for greater efficiency. The proactive handling of leaks can prevent water loss, and faster response times to abnormal weather events, such as flooding and water main bursts, can reduce wastage and improve service. These insights can then be used to improve services and reduce time to address issues.
In addition, to addressing such problems and challenges effectively, predictive analytics solutions also enable real-time data analysis, which can be used to deliver accurate demand forecasting. This assists water utilities to optimise resource allocation, leverage deeper insight for planning processes, and predict future growth.
Growing populations, as well as scarce water resources, places additional pressure on the infrastructure and improving performance requires this infrastructure to be utilised optimally in order to ensure service delivery. Harnessing the power of data, analytics and technology can assist water utility providers to improve customer service, operational efficiency and environmental impact, while enabling more effective delivery of services.
