Pioneering Water Quality Analytics as-a-Service Solution Launched for UK Drinking Water Companies

Technology company Siemens has introduced an innovative service that provides UK water utilities with the real-time water quality data and insights they need to get ahead of issues in drinking water networks and improve maintenance regimes.

The new Water Quality Analytics as a Service (WQAaaS) simplifies and derisks the process of bringing insight directly into water company operations, accelerating the pace of digital transformation and empowering companies to push the standard against the demanding performance commitments that will be set for AMP8, the eighth asset management period regulated by Ofwat.

The solution provides network operators with the installation and management of sensors, data connectivity, data visualisation, integration into existing data sources, and analytical insights from the treatment works to the customer’s tap.

The transformative analytics modules are deployed in a secure cloud platform and enable water utility companies to review the estimated travel time throughout the network, helping operators manage the risk of bacterial growth in water that’s been in the system for extended periods, optimising water safety processes.

The solution will also reduce the risk of discolouration complaints and the cost of flushing programmes by quantifying the movement of material through the network. This assists with highlighting areas of elevated risk of discolouration of water supply and with guiding intervention works in the right areas to get the best return on investment for those interventions.

WQAaaS can also reshape how water providers approach maintenance. Cloud-based analytics modules will inform the scheduling of service reservoir cleaning to be driven by performance and accumulation of material, reducing both operational costs and risk. The technology can also improve resilience and response to incidents by combining real-time data with District Metered Area (DMA) level simulation of water age and chlorine levels.

In the long run, this can allow users to review the relationship between leakage events and changes in water quality parameters to inform potential changes in network management.

Long term Siemens partners Northumbrian Water (NWG) and The University of Sheffield joined Siemens alongside other leaders from across the water industry at its Transform 2024 show at Manchester Central last month for the launch of the WQAaaS.

NWG and Siemens first conceived of WQAaaS at the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival in 2020. NWG now leads the Ofwat funded ‘Treatment to Tap’ project which utilises the same analytical approach and supplies over 100,000 Teesside residents with clean drinking water.

The development process also benefitted from insight from the world-leading Water Infrastructure Engineering group at The University of Sheffield.

Our customers’ expectations are increasing, and we can only meet them by being bold and innovating. Our goal is that nine out of 10 customers choose tap over bottled water, and real-time water quality information will help us get there by getting ahead of problems so we can intervene before customers become aware.

Alan Brown, Head of Water Quality for Northumbrian Water

Joby Boxall, Professor of Water Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Sheffield, said, “Water quality data is being collected from UK water networks at a volume that has never been seen before. Unlocking value from this requires innovative analytics that provides actionable insights to inform proactive management. Our research with Siemens and the Ofwat funded ‘Treatment to Tap’ project are world leading examples of this.”

Dr John Gaffney, Siemens Technical Lead for the Water Quality programme, added, “There are no scale deployments of clean water quality sensors in the UK water industry: the cost:benefit historically didn’t stack up. This was due to unknowns around ‘how best to manage sensors’ and also the time-consuming nature of manual data analysis.  

“Now these have been overcome through business model design and analytics integration, WQAaaS can be transformative. It gives every UK water company the opportunity to change the paradigm for how they manage their real-time water quality.”

For more information, visit: www.siemens.co.uk/water