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Digital TransformationIn the Water Sector
E-BOOK
innovyze.com
Industry leaders across the water sector from Innovyze,
Amazon Web Services, Houston Water, and the former
director of the Environmental Protection Agency
recently came together to share their insights on how
digital transformation is rapidly evolving throughout
the industry and creating significant opportunities
for water utilities. Using digital solutions to create a
dynamic, accurate record of water infrastructure assets
and applying automated intelligence to predict and
manage risk empowers utilities to fulfill their goals. At
the same time, there are still some common barriers
holding utilities back from adopting these new digital
technologies that still need to be overcome.
In this eBook, industry experts address how the water sector is using digital transformation to enhance the services of water utilities.
Meet the Panel:
Yvonne W. Forrest
Director of Houston Water
Carol Browner
Senior Counselor in the Sustainability
Practice, Albright Stonebridge Group
Patrick Keaney
Worldwide Head of Development,
AWS Water
Colby T. Manwaring
CEO, Innovyze
How is digital transformation helping water utilities to achieve their goals today?
There are three primary ways digital transformation is helping water utilities leverage the cloud and new
technologies to fulfill their goals:
1. Digital transformation applies automated intelligence to enhance data analytics, helping to draw out
conclusions and results more quickly and accurately. When you have all your data loaded into a centralized
digital system, you can apply analytics easily.
2. In the water industry, you’re working with pipes, pumps, tanks, and sensors, in addition to many other
infrastructures involved in providing drinking water and wastewater services. Digital transformation creates
a record of all the systems involved into a virtual world, essentially creating a virtual asset data register,
enabling you to optimize water affordability, increase water availability, and improve water quality.
3. Empowering people with digital solutions essentially allows them to offload the tedious work associated
with tracking, monitoring, and documenting various systems to focus more on being proactive and innovative,
ultimately enhancing the future performance of the water system.
In these three areas, you can apply a wealth of cloud-based tools and services to drive value. These can be
as simple as migrating data to the cloud to save money on storage within on-premise data centers, or as
advanced as using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to better detect anomalies in treatment plants.
What are the benefits water utilities are seeing from digital transformation and using cloud technology?The opportunities digital transformation provides are generally to optimize water affordability, water
availability, and water quality. The benefits include:
• Reducing costs
• Mitigating risks
• More efficient capital planning
• Reducing water loss
• Improving asset management and the overall management of your water systems
Water utilities often have issues with data silos, leaving gaps in collecting and sharing information. Do we
have the correct data? Where is the data? How can we get the data into one place? The cloud provides a more
efficient place to store and manage data, breaking down the silos, and allowing you to keep your data
consistently up to date, all in one place, so you can quickly access it at any time.
Another cost-effective benefit of adopting cloud technology is you only pay for what you use. The cost of
ownership for IT systems in the cloud is typically much less than purchasing and supporting equivalent
processing power on premise, potentially reducing your costs by 30 to 50%.
An additional benefit is around the emergence of the sensor technology, or IoT. Ordinarily, there would be
a number of barriers to implementing a high volume of new sensors and IoT devices into an on-premise
system, but the cloud easily allows IoT sensor data to be quickly implemented into your management and
analytics systems
How is digital transformation helping utilities to connectwith their customers better? Most water utilities feel they have excellent communication with many of their stakeholders but
acknowledge they struggle to connect with the end customer. The cloud enables a whole new world of
communication strategies with the end customer. You can use voice-enabled, in-home smart assistants
like Amazon Echo to provide a whole new experience around paying bills and understanding your water
consumption. For the customer, smartphone technology is excellent to stay up to date via text or mobile
applications. But smartphone technology is also unlocking a whole new realm of “Human as a Sensor”
applications that allow customers to take photos and videos of leaks and failures, and sending them in
to the utility for analysis and record keeping. These enhanced asset management programs can create
tremendous value for the customer and the utility.
What are the most common barriers utilities face when implementing digital transformation programs, and how can cloud technology help overcome the barriers? Leadership - You need a vision to effectively use this technology, and currently, there is not much clarity
on who should be responsible for digital transformation or understand how it works. Having the proper
leadership to define the vision, the goals, and the requirements needed to manage and connect all this
data, and drive the implementation and continuation of the solutions, is incredibly valuable for water
utilities.
Data management - There is a common misbelief that the water industry is slow-moving and not data-
driven, but in fact, an enormous amount of data is being captured; we need to apply the right technology
to share it and gain more intelligence from it. Luckily, there is a vast array of digital solutions already being
used within the water industry, but it needs to be managed cohesively to fully utilize the power of all the
available data.
How is technology is evolving to make digital transformation more accessible to every utility? Cloud technology alleviates the need for a pile of hardware you would typically have to waste your
budget on purchasing, maintaining, and updating.
There is also a misconception that adopting these new digital technologies or the cloud requires you to
start over and discard all of the data you have collected up to that point. You do not. You can accelerate
from where you are now rather than starting over. Digital Twin solutions like Info360 can readily incorporate
existing data streams, including your SCADA, AMI/AMR, LIMS, and any number of other live data sources,
without having to reconfigure, redeploy, or rebuild any data systems. Our solutions are purpose-built to
talk to any number of web-based data transfer protocols or on-premise database connections in just a few
simple steps, giving you immediate value from your existing investments.
Regarding resources, finding proficient, affordable human resources to build and manage on-premise
digital solutions can be challenging. Typically, smaller utilities do not have the budget to get a high-level
computer programmer or system architect, which is another reason to leverage cloud technology. Having
such a simplified and efficient version of these complex technologies is so helpful in managing your
complex asset data and maintaining it in a virtual asset registry.
Is the regulatory landscape helping or hurting utilities in their efforts to achieve digital transformation today? Regulatory compliance is an issue that every utility must address, regardless of size, budget, or
sophistication and keeping up with all the consistently evolving requirements can be incredibly
challenging.
Regulatory compliance is an issue that every utility must address, regardless of size, budget, or sophistication,
and keeping up with all the evolving requirements can be incredibly challenging.
According to former EPA Director Carol Browner, as a regulator, one of the first things you can do is to make
sure there’s flexibility in how federal dollars that flow through the states and down to the local utilities can
be used by letting the utilities allocate some of those funds towards digital transformation. The second part
would be, when you’re putting in place new requirements, think about how you can make it easier for the
local utility to comply by using digital transformation? For example, demonstrating compliance can be made
easier using digital systems that provide assurances through detailed, continuous audit trails. So, if you’ve
converted over to digital, the government wouldn’t require the same manual assurances because we can see
clearly how the system or service is performing through the digital system.
If you’re the regulator then you want to incentivize the local utility to make the investments, and part of how
you do that is giving them some flexibility.
How do you address the concern with data privacy and security in the cloud? Innovyze specifically partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) because of its rigorous and reliable
security systems. AWS was developed to be the most flexible and secure computing environment available
today, with the ability to fulfill the security requirements for large, demanding entities like the military, global
banks, and many other organizations managing highly sensitive and private information.
Anyone using the AWS cloud is receiving the same high level of security.
Additionally, many utilities are faced with servers, databases, and computers crashing or malfunctioning,
causing much disruption in their systems. However, with the cloud, you have extremely high reliability, as
well as multiple tracking tools and monitoring systems, providing you with full, continuous visibility of what is
happening with your assets.
The other piece of cybersecurity is resilience. When your data is on premise, sitting in a data center or on
a desktop, it needs to be backed up and stored somewhere offsite in the event of disaster. While using
CONTACT US
To learn moreor discuss your projects: • Contact your regional sales manager
• Or see innovyze.com/products/info360
Delivering next generation water lifecycle management through the power of the cloud.
How do you see the water sector using technology25 years from now? Digital transformation will create extreme transparency and predictability around the condition of assets –
most of which are underground – as well as system performance, water safety, usage, waste, and potential
risks from unplanned events. The cloud is the great democratizer, giving utilities of every size the opportunity
to digitally transform their operations, asset management, and customer service organizations. Having
tools like Info360 from Innovyze will help to create this universal transparency around water infrastructure
and consumption so that everyone will be able to actively participate in water sustainability, rather than
passively paying a price later. Continuing to educate and engage with the customer is critically important,
and deploying real-time usage data through the cloud, with voice-enabled services for simple, two-way
communication with customers will be commonplace in the years to come.
the cloud, you’re able to have more control of where your data is stored, plus there are often two or more
availability zones that will provide secure access to your data. Also, suppose you have multiple data centers
spread out, and all have redundant power, networking, and connectivity when a natural disaster or some
other type of crisis occurs. In that case, you can still have all your data backed up to a secure system in the
cloud, literally saving your systems from crashing to a point they’re not able to recover from. spread out, and
all have redundant power, networking, and connectivity when a natural disaster or some other type of crisis
occurs. In that case, you can still have all your data backed up to a secure system in the cloud, literally saving
your systems from crashing to a point they’re not able to recover from.
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