Our Networked World - - The Pipes

Water pipes are dumb - - and old, over 50% of the mains in the Western Hemisphere are 80-years or older. A vast network that cannot tell you much. Cannot tell you when a pipe is broken or leaking. Cannot, in most cases, tell you where it is located. A system of dumb and old in an era of tight fiscal constraints and the need for greater and greater system efficiencies.

London is a perfect example of the limitations of a dumb network combined with the opportunities of smart systems - - smart in the context of more information and knowledge with the goal of producing more system output for a given level of system input in a sustainable world of doing more with less. By the mid-2000s, London had one of the leakiest water supply systems in the developed world. Every day nearly 900m litres of treated water was lost and 240 leaks had to be fixed daily.

London and many other cities are working on making their dumb water network into a smart system. Examples of trends around the world are detailed below:

• London is installing wireless senors on all new water pipes - - they can tell where they have a broken main before the customer makes the phone call.
• The smart systems are geared toward moving the overall system faster from "data collection to information to knowledge to action." The London system not only automatically deals with leaks but also schedules work crews and sends text messages to affected customers. Management shifts from spending time monitoring to making the utility processes more efficient. This is the very heart of sustainability.
• Smarter networks can be combined with "smarter brains" - - the eyes, ears, and brains that provide managers with advanced decision support tools. An example of a "smarter brain" is a platform offered by an Israeli firm, TaKaDu (http://www.takadu.com/). The firm analyses historical and online data to provide a basis for comparison, enabling its algorithms to detect things that are about to go wrong.
• Dumb water networks need not only a smarter core, but they need much smarter edges. Where the edge of the system starts at the water meter. Boston is a good example - - as early as 2004, the City's Water and Sewer Commission has equipped almost all of its customers with wireless smart meters. New York is planning on installing 800,000 smart water meters at a cost of $250 million. Singapore has a target of reducing domestic water use per person from 155 litres in 2008 to 147 litres by 2020. Smart meters and dynamic pricing during periods of peak demand will play an important role in meeting this goal.
• Smart water systems are not just about reducing water loss. Making systems smarter helps promote sustainability by saving energy and other inputs wasted through production and pumping of water that if often lost to network inefficiencies.

As smart systems and sustainability become more important in the context of water systems, look for the following terms and ideas to gain more traction:

• Active Leakage Control
• Water Infrastructure Monitoring
• Network Events
• Anomaly Detection
• Statistical Water Network Analysis
• Blind Spots
• Monitoring for Sustainability
• Increased Instrumentation and Telemetry of Water Networks
• Water Enterprise Data Sources
• Water Network Decision Support Systems
• Automation and Analytic Solutions
• Efficiency, Longevity, Reliability
• Measuring, Collecting, Analyzing, Acting