Digital Water

Towards the Next Generation of Water Systems

The IWA Digital Water Programme will help facilitate the journey of the water industry towards digital uptake and integration into water services. The programme will be a gateway for water utilities to access knowledge on the application of digital approaches to improve capacity and performance.

The programme will serve water utilities in several ways depending on their digital maturity:

– As a starting point to initiate the dialogue on digital water

– As a mechanism to learn new ideas to build on their own experiences in applying digital solutions, and

– As a platform to share experiences on their digital transformation.

Why Digital Water?

The great water challenges of our time, namely climate change, population growth and increasing urbanization, and ageing and overly stressed infrastructure, inflict significant pressure on water networks. The water industry, and in particular water utilities, needs to adapt to meet the emerging demands of a dynamic, highly deregulated and competitive environment within the context of a changing climate. In such an environment, water utilities need to continue to deliver essential services including safe and secure drinking water, stormwater management and wastewater management.

Addressing these ongoing and growing challenges requires a transformation to optimize its processes and operational efficiency. In fact, these challenges and their increasing complexity necessitate a paradigm shift to the next generation of water systems beyond traditional water and sewerage infrastructure. The development of new systems is against the background of cyber-physical systems, digitalization and big data where software, sensors, processors, communication and control technologies are increasingly integrated, to enable informed decisions in an increasingly changing, complex and uncertain world.

A paradigm shift for the water industry

The paradigm shift for the water industry is to move towards (i) offering new services ranging from resource recovery to newer digital approaches as a consequence of integrating organizational siloes to offer a dynamic and sustainable real-time decision-making; (ii) considering a systems approach which recognizes the interconnectedness of water across sectors and how decision-making can improve benefit sharing and (iii) decentralisation or distributed systems to maximize resource recovery, deal with rapid growing cities, and dampen the propagation of failures.

To support these shifts in how water services are operated, water utilities will be expected to invest in appropriate measures, which include the digitalization of the way water is managed, distributed and regulated.

IWA Digital Water Programme

The Digital Water Programme aims to act as a catalyst for innovation, knowledge and best practices around digitalization for the water industry, provide a platform to share experiences and promote leadership in transitioning to digital water solutions, and consolidate lessons to guide the natural evolution from the ‘business as usual’ to achieving a digital water utility.

The Programme is driven by end users (e.g. utilities, regulators) as well as solution providers (e.g. technology companies, software companies, researchers, academia) at the forefront of emerging technologies to solve urgent and costly operational problems to deliver water services. A Steering Committee, chaired by Oliver Grievson, guides the Programme in collaboration with IWA Secretariat.

Vision

The uptake and integration of digital water will shape resilient water utilities of the future that manage water wisely, sustainably and equitably.

Mission

The Digital Water Programme will provide a platform for water utilities to explore and share experiences on their digital water journey. The Programme will provide roadmaps and guidance that will help water utilities in making the transition to the next generation of smart water systems and fulfil the need for improved resiliency to secure and sustainably manage water resources now and in the future.

Programme outputs

The Digital Water Programme produces several outputs, including a white paper series, blogs, podcasts, etc. To learn more about how to engage with the Programme, visit here