Water Industry Process Automation & Control Monthly - September 2025

WIPAC MONTHLY
The Monthly Update from Water Industry Process Automation & Control
www.wipac.org.uk Issue 8&9/2025 - August/September 2025

In this Issue
WIPAC Monthly is a publication of the Water Industry Process Automation & Control Group. It is produced by the group
manager and WIPAC Monthly Editor, Oliver Grievson. This is a free publication for the benefit of the Water Industry and please feel
free to distribute to any who you may feel benefit. However due to the ongoing costs of WIPAC Monthly a donation website has
been set up to allow readers to contribute to the running of WIPAC & WIPAC Monthly, For those wishing to donate then please visit
https://www.patreon.com/Wipac all donations will be used solely for the benefit and development of WIPAC.
All enquires about WIPAC Monthly, including those who want to publish news or articles within these pages, should be directed
to the publications editor, Oliver Grievson at olivergrievson@hotmail.com
From the editor............................................................................................................. 3
Industry news..............................................................................................................
Highlights of the news of the month from the global water industry centred around the successes of a few of the companies
in the global market.
4 - 12
Thinking bigger:- the need for a national monitoring strategy..............................
The water industry has seen a significant increase in the need for monitoring of the wastewater system as a whole and the amount
of monitoring is going to increase significantly over the next ten years. Coupled with this is a huge amount of local testing as well.
This feature article looks at what monitoring the water industry is either currently delivering and the need for a national monitoring
strategy
13-17
A case study of Proactive Sewer Monitoring and Intervention..................................
In this case study we look at the collaboration between Anglian Water and StormHarvester and how their Dynamic Sewer Visualisation
programme, which launched in 2023, has delivered a 70% hit rate and over 5,000 jobs to proactive remove blockages enabling them
to remove smaller blockages rather than the labour intensive removal of large sewer blockages.
18
Workshops, conferences & seminars............................................................................
The highlights of the conferences and workshops in the coming months.
19 - 20

From the Editor

After a break for the summer, WIPAC is back, with something special for readers. In this month's edition i've attempted
to reflect on the Cunliffe Report that was published just before the summer started especially concentrating on his
comments around monitoring. Most of you will know that I am somewhat passionate about data and its quality but
also for those of you who read the white paper that I wrote a few years ago for the International Water Association the
operability of instrumentation and its use as a data feed for the evolution of the water industry in to an industry that is no
longer "data rich, information poor," but into an industry that uses its data to effectively operate. This doesn't mean that
the industry will have thousands more sensors and thousands more data sources but have the right amount and monitor
with purpose. This is what I meant when I proposed the concept of the instrumentation life-cycle.
Perversely though the industry has seen, especially in the wastewater side of the industry, a massive increase in not only
the number of instruments but also in the data frequency and the stress that it puts on the industry is every increasing.
More and more does not always mean better, more frequent data sources does not always mean problems can be solved. I
remember a supplier spoke to me about 5 years ago and they were looking at fibre optic cable in the wastewater network.
There comment at the time was - " well if we put fibre optic cable in the network we can measure temperature at several
thousand times a second," my answer was "ok that`s smart but in reality there is no real use in measuring temperature
that many times in the sewer environment, the ability of data transmission is of a much greater use." Now at that time the sewer level monitoring revolution
was just starting in the water industry and now when I look at case studies such as the one we have in this month's edition I can see the worth of monitoring
at tens of thousands of points across the sewer network.
If I look at this case study in detail and use an approximate calculation that I developed as part of some work I've been doing for a client recently I would have
to install over 400,000 monitors across the country for the business case to start to not make sense and that is just taking into account half the cost of sewer
blockages, let alone the impact that it has on customers. Of course the sewer level revolution is starting to do really clever things and create hot spotting of
areas of inflow and infiltration something that has always caused problems to the wastewater industry. Put these innovations into the melting pot and we are
getting to a point that we are starting to demonstrate the principles of a Digitally Transformed water industry.
There are a huge number of challenges over the next ten or twenty years in the water industry, monitoring, data and its use, which has always been the very
start of the Digital Transformation journey and getting down to the basics of using our data sources and garnering value from the information that they can
give will start to reap dividends. The next stage we obviously have to work towards is our Feature Article this month....I won't give any spoilers but let those
of you who are interested throw the comments towards me....after all the start of it all is to allow the conversation to happen.
Have a good month,
Oliver
P.S. Hope to see some of you at Sensing in Water

Northumbrian Water invests £51 million to install data-gathering
monitors in rivers, streams and becks
Northumbrian Water is investing £51 million to install data-gathering monitors across rivers, streams and becks across the North East that will help monitor
river quality and allow teams to respond quicker to any problems or issues. The monitors, which are around the size of small suitcase and are solar-powered,
measure a series of key elements in the watercourse every 15 minutes, and sensors can flag any potential changes to conditions in quick-time, allowing for
action to be taken.
So far, 31 monitors have been installed in areas including Houghton-le Spring and Rainton, and over the next four years 390 more will be deployed in locations
all the way from north Northumberland to North Yorkshire. When all are in place, they will help the water company collect data and information from hundreds
of different local watercourses and enhance understanding of the environmental impact of storm overflow events and sewage treatment works - ultimately
helping to reduce pollution and improve the environment.
By protecting local rivers, streams and becks, it is hoped that this work will continue to encourage wildlife to return. Northumbrian Water says it is already seeing
the results of its efforts - otters, trout and heron are among wildlife that have returned to a stream in Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham as Northumbrian
Water works to help improve the health of waterways across the region.
Late last year, Northumbrian Water customer Dave Ford had a monitor installed in his rear garden, which backs onto a stream. The vital data gathered in Dave’s
garden is helping Northumbrian Water teams understand the quality of the stream, and monitoring for any impact from storm overflows, as well as issues like
misconnections or local pollution from other sources.
Dave, who has lived in the property for 20 years, says he has seen a drastic change in the beck over time. He said:
“20 years ago whenever there was a storm, a storm overflow at the end of the garden used to open and after it had passed I’d have to walk up and down the
stream, clearing rubbish. That doesn't happen anymore. Over those 20 years the stream has changed quite dramatically and we now even have trout visiting
regularly from about May to November. “I've seen a number of otters in the stream, and I also know that it's got a very healthy population of freshwater shrimp.
Compared with 20 years ago this is now a perfectly alive stream which gives me a great deal of pleasure.”
Richard Warneford, Wastewater Director at Northumbrian Water added:
“It’s fantastic to see the wildlife returning in these areas. We’re very passionate about the environment, and we’re really proud to be part of this project along
with the communities in our region, as well as our partners.”
Page 4
Industry News

Northumbrian Water taps into space-age tech to detect and repair
leaks
Northumbrian Water is using space-age technology to help tackle leaking pipes across the North East faster than ever before…and often before they’re even
visible. It’s working with Gateshead-based partners, Origin Tech, who have developed Origin Find and Fix® technology – a world-first solution which both
locates and repairs leaks in one single visit, helping to protect precious water resources.
The cutting-edge system uses satellites, orbiting miles above the earth in outer space, to detect any underground leaks, often before they can be seen at the
surface. Unique AI software modelling analyses the real-time data sent by the satellites to spot subtle changes in soil or streets surrounding the pipe that could
indicate escaping water.
Once a potential leak is found, this information is sent straight to field teams who can visit and fix the leak immediately using Origin’s No Dig technology – a
gel-like solution which is injected into pipework, forming a seal around any cracks or holes.
Traditionally, finding and fixing leaks on the region’s vast pipe network can be a lengthy and a costly process, involving time-consuming excavation and repair.
But since 2023, Northumbrian Water has used Origin No Dig® wherever possible to speed up repairs, avoiding the need to dig up roads or pavements, and
reducing disruption for customers.
Now, it’s become one of the first water companies in the UK to use Origin Find and Fix® - combining Origin Orbit™ satellite technology with Origin No Dig®, for
both leak detection and repair. Northumbrian Water’s Head of Water Networks, Jim Howey, said: “We’re very excited about the introduction of Origin Find and
Fix™ technology, which means we can detect and repair leaks before they even show at the surface.
“It’s an innovative project which, when used alongside our traditional methods of leak detection, is helping us to respond faster than ever, reduce disruption
and more importantly protect water supplies. It’s a smarter, more efficient way of working that benefits both our customers and the environment.”
John Marsden, Founder/Director at Origin Tech said, “With Origin Find and Fix™, we are redefining how water utilities approach leak detection and repair.
"This innovative system demonstrates how advanced technology can drive real-world sustainability and cost savings, and allow water companies to offer a
better service to customers.”
Binnies, Williams, and JuliaHub partner to bring scientific machine
learning to UK water sector
Binnies, Williams Grand Prix Technologies, and JuliaHub have announced a partnership to introduce scientific machine learning (SciML) to the UK water sector.
This collaboration aims to help water companies shift from reactive to predictive asset management using existing data, marking a first for the industry in the UK.
The partnership brings AI technology from the motorsport, aviation, and aerospace industries to assist water companies in preventing asset failures before they
occur. The move aligns with the recommendations of the recently published Cunliffe Review, which urges water companies to pro-actively assess asset condition
even when data quality is limited.
As the UK water sector prepares for its next investment cycle (AMP8), there is a growing consensus that predicting failures earlier and taking a more proactive
approach to asset health are crucial. However, challenges remain, particularly around poor data quality, which limits the effectiveness of current predictive
models.
To address this, Binnies formed a partnership with Williams Grand Prix Technologies and JuliaHub, combining their sector expertise and engineering capabilities
with SciML. This advanced technology is designed to function in complex engineering environments where traditional machine learning may not be as effective.
Unlike traditional machine learning, which relies on large amounts of clean historical data, SciML integrates scientific principles like fluid dynamics and
thermodynamics to predict asset behaviour. This allows for more accurate predictions, even in the absence of complete data or when sensor deployments are
limited.
SciML has already been successfully applied in sectors such as motorsport, aviation, and aerospace. For the water industry, it promises to reduce the need for
costly sensor installations or extensive data cleaning, allowing companies to make better use of the data they already have.
Page 5

Fiji embarks on its first Smart Water metering project with Itron and
Pacific Technologies
The Water Authority of Fiji (WAF) has embarked on its first smart metering deployment, partnering with Itron, Inc. and Pacific Technologies to modernize its
water operations and reduce losses across its network. The rollout, which began in May 2025 and is scheduled for completion in Q3 2025, marks a milestone in
the utility’s digital transformation.
The project involves upgrading existing meters with Itron mechanical meters fitted with Cyble communications modules. With their simple clip-on design,
the modules transform conventional meters into smart devices, enabling automated data collection through Itron’s cloud-based Temetra solution. This will
eliminate manual meter reading and provide WAF with a comprehensive, real-time view of water consumption.
One of WAF’s key challenges is non-revenue water, which it estimates at 47% of production. The new system will deliver advanced data analytics to help pinpoint
leaks and apparent losses, a crucial step toward achieving the five outcomes of WAF’s Water Sector Strategy 2050: clean water, safe sanitation, livability and
sustainability, financial sustainability, and a skilled workforce.
“We have a long-term vision for the future of water in Fiji,” said Josateki Sivo, head of customer metering and installation at WAF. “One key benefit of deploying
Itron’s Cyble module is that it’s scalable. This allows us to expand our smart metering program gradually, based on our priorities and budget.”
Danish Khalil, general manager of Pacific Technologies (New Zealand) Limited, called the initiative “a monumental milestone,” adding: “The simplicity of the
installation will enable us to quickly see benefits, including reducing and identifying non-revenue water loss.”
Itron emphasized that its solution is built for Fiji’s coastal conditions, where salt spray can corrode infrastructure. “Our Cyble module can handle diverse
environments and is resistant to corrosion, contaminants and temperature,” said Justin Patrick, Itron’s senior vice president of Device Solutions.
Daily river bathing water quality testing regional pilot project
expands across Shropshire
Wild swimmers in Shrewsbury can now make better-informed decisions about river safety
through an expanded regional pilot project, which monitors river water quality on a daily
basis. The Environment Agency has installed high-tech autonomous sensors in the River
Severn at Shrewsbury, to remotely provide daily readings on bacteria levels including E. coli.
The Agency is using a Fluidion Alert 2 bacteria sensor for the daily bathing water testing in
Ludlow and Shrewsbury. The data has provided insight into the baseline bacteria levels in
the river.
Last week, the Shrewsbury data was launched on the Shropshire Wild Bathing app, allowing
river users to check current water quality conditions and decide when it’s safe to swim. The
water quality data is automatically uploaded every hour onto the app developed by the
River Severn Partnership.
Wild swimmers can download the Shropshire Wild Bathing app to access up-to-date water
quality information for Shrewsbury and Ludlow on Google Play store or Apple App Store.
The daily readings complement existing weekly statutory monitoring throughout the
bathing water season from 15 May to 30 September. The Environment Agency takes over
7,000 samples at 451 designated bathing waters across England during this period.
Martin Quine, Environment Agency Place Manager for Shropshire, said:
“This project is important because it enables users of the bathing site to make informed decisions on when they access the river.
“It’s also important for us to get the data to understand where pollution is coming from, so we can target our work to those places where it will have maximum
benefit.”
The project expanded to Shrewsbury after the success of the River Severn Partnership’s research and development initiative in Ludlow earlier this year, which
has also resumed this month. The research project has accelerated the Environment Agency’s understanding of how bacteria in rivers behave throughout the
year, and particularly during the bathing water season. The Agency said the data helps it better understand and identify sources of pollution, and will inform
possible future methods of managing bathing waters.
Funding has also been secured to extend the research project to Ironbridge in 2026, demonstrating the government’s commitment to exploring innovative
water quality monitoring methods to improve water quality monitoring and public safety. The Shropshire Wild Bathing app was developed by the River Severn
Partnership Advanced Wireless Innovation Region (RSPAWIR) and Wolf Logic. The app has received over 1,000 downloads to date since launching last week.
The RSPAWIR, managed by Shropshire Council, has been awarded £4m of funding from the Department of Science, Industry and Technology, to support the
growth of wireless innovation and technology in some of its key economic sectors.
Bacteria sensors and sondes take automatic water quality readings from the
River Severn
Page 6

Affinity Water partners with Lightsonic and Openreach to tackle
water leaks
Affinity Water has awarded a major contract to Lightsonic to deploy its Distributed Fibre Optic Sensing (DFOS) leak detection technology, which is being trialled
on Openreach’s existing fibre network. This marks a significant investment in their strategy to reduce leakage across its water supply system.
With the UK water sector under mounting pressure to tackle one of its biggest challenges — leakage — Affinity Water is stepping up efforts to drive meaningful
change. Every day, the UK loses approximately 3 billion litres of treated water—equivalent to over 1,200 Olympic swimming pools. This represents nearly a
quarter of the country’s water supply, highlighting the urgent need for action. The scale of the issue is stark, and the industry has committed to halving leakage
levels by 2050. Lightsonic’ is piloting the use of DFOS to convert Openreach’s fibre optic cables into thousands of virtual sensors. These detect the unique
acoustic signatures of leaking water, allowing for pinpoint accuracy.
Machine learning algorithms filter out background noise—like road traffic or vibrations—ensuring reliable, real-time alerts. By using existing infrastructure,
when compared to existing methods, this approach is significantly faster at detecting leaks, more scalable, and more cost-effective. This continuous monitoring
capability enables Affinity Water to identify and respond before issues arise—minimising disruption, reducing the need for emergency street works, and allowing
for planned maintenance during off-peak hours. This partnership represents a bold step towards a smarter, more sustainable water network—one that harnesses
data, connectivity, and collaboration to protect vital resources and improve service resilience.
James Curtis, Head of Leakage at Affinity Water, commented: "This is a transformative moment for our leakage strategy. By harnessing Lightsonic’s advanced
fibre optic sensing technology and Openreach’s extensive network, we’re unlocking a new era of proactive leak detection. This will help us meet our ambitious
leakage reduction targets and deliver a more resilient service to our customers."
Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology at Openreach, said: “Openreach is constantly looking at leveraging new technology and innovation to improve
the resilience and efficiency of our network. “Openreach’s fibre network is already part of the critical national infrastructure of the UK – and this new technology
could enable us to help protect the other networks critical to people’s lives across the country.”
“In supporting Affinity Water and Lightsonic in this pilot project we aim to show how our infrastructure can deliver value far beyond broadband—helping to
solve real-world challenges like water conservation."
Tommy Langnes, CEO of Lightsonic, added: "This contract is a major milestone for Lightsonic and a testament to the power of collaboration. We’re proud to scale
our technology with Affinity Water and Openreach to help protect one of our most precious resources. This is just the beginning—fibre sensing has the potential
to revolutionise utility monitoring across the UK and beyond."
Can Wastewater Help Fuel AI Growth?
The continuous growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) is driving a proportional demand for data centres that can manage
their substantial infrastructure requirements. This, in turn, presents a significant challenge: balancing the increasing need for computing resources with crucial
sustainability goals, particularly regarding water usage. Data centres require substantial amounts of water to prevent their equipment from overheating, which
can impact reliability and performance.
However, water scarcity concerns are becoming increasingly prominent in different parts of the world, including in several key regions of the UK. Anglian Water,
which serves Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and parts of Cambridgeshire, has struggled to provide enough water for large data centres in water-stressed
areas. Regulations also limit how much drinking water can be used for such industrial purposes, including data centres. Cambridge Water has expressed similar
concerns, stating they would support AI growth zones only if water could be supplied sustainably without impacting current customer supplies.
In response to these challenges, Anglian Water has proposed a bold solution: cooling large data centres with “treated sewage effluent” instead of drinking water.
Geoff Darch, head of strategic asset planning at Anglian Water, recently told the BBC that companies looking to establish new data centres should be strategically
locating them near water recycling plants to facilitate easier access to these alternative supplies.
While the hope is that this could significantly reduce the demand for drinking water for these facilities, the initial impact is expected to be minimal. Darch noted
that recycled wastewater may account for only a single-digital percent of overall consumption, although even that will amount to “tens of millions of litres per
day.”
The concept has garnered support; the Data Centre Alliance did not object to using treated sewage, and John Booth, who chairs its energy efficiency committee,
stated he “would not see a problem” with using “pumped effluent from the very last stage of a sewage plant” for cooling. This water, of course, would be treated
by the data centre before entering the cooling system to reduce corrosion or damage. Elizabeth Orchard from the Institution of Civil Engineers confirmed that
wastewater-powered cooling is as a “known, viable technology” and “very sensible” if a suitable source is nearby.
Beyond wastewater, other innovative cooling strategies contribute significantly to water conservation and efficiency. Many large data centres in the UK already
employ closed-loop cooling systems, which do not need continual supplies beyond an initial “charge up.” Digital Realty, for example, uses DCI electrolysis for
water preservation in one facility, saving 1.24 million litres monthly by extending water usage and eliminating chemicals.
Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to cooling. Data centres utilize diverse methods like direct liquid cooling and immersion cooling for high-density
AI/HPC workloads, evaporative cooling for specific inferencing deployments, and free cooling, which leverages cooler outside air or water to minimize carbon
footprint. Hybrid cooling strategies that combine multiple technologies are also becoming increasingly common. Regardless, it’s clear that recycled wastewater
has the potential to reduce water stress while supporting growth of AI and HPC.
Page 7

The key role data plays in delivering Water 2050
The Water 2050 strategy is ambitious in its vision to protect public health and improve the environmental performance of one of our key utilities. Indeed, two
of the key overall objectives are to deliver clean water for all and the development of a more resilient water infrastructure.
In order to deliver these two key objectives, the use of data and advanced data analytics will be key, particularly in the area of maintenance and asset
performance.
To deliver clean water, the strategy’s ambition is to use technology for non-invasive asset condition monitoring, asset optimisation and network risk assessments.
With maintenance, understanding the different variables that affect the health of an asset is vital. This includes, for example, the impact of vibration on rotating
machinery, such as pumps, centrifuges, drive shafts and couplings caused by bearing wear in motors. There are two potential solutions that could help deliver
the strategy: Firstly, predictive maintenance, along with condition-based monitoring and, secondly, Edge analytics and the use of digital twins.
Key is to collect data and then operate on that data to provide meaningful information
The key is to collect data and then operate on that data to provide meaningful information back to the utility company about the health or performance of an
asset. Water treatment and unmanned pumping stations provide a textbook example of where data can be used to drive productivity and efficiency. A modular,
smart condition monitoring solution can be quickly deployed and offers a clear ROI. It does so by moving away from reactive and preventative maintenance
regimes, or the need for a technician on site, towards the development of systems with early warning of asset failure, via remote monitoring.
With predictive maintenance, software such as Mitsubishi Electric’s Edge platform, which can be deployed on-site with offsite analysis, can offer a dual capability
of both data management and Edge-based analytics. In operation, this type of software can create a diagnostic rule that would include anything affecting the
health and performance of the asset. For example, a rule for gear wear could be dependent upon on a number of factors, including temperature, humidity and
the materials the gears are made from.
Once the rules are defined, the Edge software uses real-time diagnostic mode to monitor the asset using closed loop control to apply the rule directly to the
asset when required. A good operational example would be the use of rules in an aeration plant. The software monitors the health of the equipment and the
variables that impact performance, such as PH and dissolved oxygen levels. A digital twin of the plant can then be developed to compare the performance of
the plant against the model in order to ensure optimal, real-time performance.
A second key objective of the Water 2050 strategy is to deliver resilient infrastructure systems that can adapt to known and unknown future challenges.
Water companies have access to significant amounts of data, but the issue is often organising that data into a single view.
Use of situational awareness platform is essential for operations to respond quickly to events. The use of a situational awareness platform that unites telemetry,
customer data, engineering data, weather data, fleet and workflow management, into a single, integrated system, viewed through a single pane of glass, is
essential for operations to respond quickly to events. The Genesis 64 platform from Mitsubishi Electric ICONICS Digital Solutions (MEIDS), for example, can be
deployed across a water utility’s entire water cycle, including catchment, clean water treatment, consumption and wastewater treatment, to collect data from
disparate sources, enabling operations to make meaningful decisions about asset performance.
The platform enables automated decision making which, in turn, can reduce response times, operating costs and improve regulatory performance.
One major UK water company with 45 treatment plants had 19 different systems that needed to be integrated. These include a combination of SCADA,
telemetry, advanced business analytics, alarm management, KPI driven dashboards, GIS reporting and integration with business data, such as customer calls.
The implementation of the GENESIS 64 platform allowed the company to respond quicker and pro-actively plan for scenarios where assets and customers were
affected. The software ultimately delivered a saving of £3.6 million whilst protecting the company’s OFWAT OPA score.
Data plays vital role in managing supply and demand of national water infrastructure.
Ultimately, with the UK population forecast to grow from 67 million in 2020 to between 75 and 79 million in 2050, it’s clear that urgent action is needed to
alleviate the pressure placed on the supply and demand of our national water infrastructure. The Water 2050 strategy represents the ambitious and decisive
action being made to address this issue, but if the UK is to achieve its key goals, the industry must recognise the vital role that data has to play. Whilst solutions
such as predictive maintenance and Edge analytics can help deliver more productive and efficient monitoring of asset health, the use of situation awareness
platforms can empower water companies to better respond to emerging events, thereby greatly strengthening the UK’s water infrastructure. The practical
benefits of deploying such technologies are clear, and have already provided phenomenal results.
In short, water’s tech-driven future is within the industry’s grasp – companies simply need to turn on the tap, and let the data that can deliver a cleaner, more
resilient water network flow freely.
Page 8

AI Could Solve America's Infrastructure Problem. Institutions Need
To Let Engineers Use It
The state of America’s crumbling infrastructure continues to be a perennial concern as the scale of the problem continually outpaces both the funding and the
human resources needed to solve it. Engineers have the solution — AI systems that offer unprecedented speed and potential cost savings — but to leverage its
full potential, engineers need to take on a new role — and potentially a new business model.
For all the concerns around AI adoption, there is clear potential and promise for AI to be the boost American infrastructure so desperately needs, streamlining
everything from planning and design, to construction, operations, and maintenance. AI has already shown its potential to dissolve bottlenecks and close long-
standing efficiency gaps. Some examples include:
• Maintenance planning through predictive modelling: AI systems trained on extensive historical engineering datasets and predictive
modelling techniques can swiftly evaluate "what‑if" scenarios, identify delay patterns, and optimize project timeliness — delivering
efficiency gains where traditional methods have stagnated.
• Extreme weather modelling and impact mitigation: Especially as the natural world becomes more complex — fires are moving faster,
flooding is more extreme, and storms are bigger — AI can help to build on top of what’s already known to help predict and model
infrastructure performance in this greater range of scenarios. Advanced machine learning tools, informed by decades of hydrological
modelling and rich geospatial datasets, now generate real-time, probabilistic flood-risk forecasts across entire watersheds. These
dynamic, data-driven insights help engineers and planners anticipate not just riverine overflow but also flash flooding — empowering
communities to plan more effective mitigation and protective measures.
• Construction and planning efficiency: In the design and renewable energy space, AI-powered computational tools now accelerate the
design of large-scale installations, such as solar farms, by automating tasks like terrain grading, panel alignment, and shading analysis.
What once took months of iterative calculations can now be completed in days or even hours, slashing earthworks by up to half,
curtailing site disturbance and carbon emissions, lowering construction costs, and maximizing energy output.
Collectively, these AI-enabled approaches have shown to dramatically reduce engineering labor and construction budgets by as much as 15% while boosting
precision and resilience of the infrastructure itself.
Given the scale of the opportunity AI offers to improve the infrastructure lifecycle, why hasn’t there been major improvement to the infrastructure process?
Part of the issue is the nature of the industries leading the charge. Between public service, which generally owns the infrastructure, and engineering, which is
responsible for overseeing its maintenance, there are few industries more cautious about the adoption of new technologies.
On average it takes governments a year and a half longer to adopt new technologies than the private sector. While the public sector struggles with the adoption
of new technology due to slow bureaucratic processes, engineers — particularly those in construction-related fields — have a natural aversion to risk and liability
concerns combined with a preference for proven solutions. Given the level of calculation and accuracy required in engineering projects, engineers tend to weigh
prudence and care over speed and efficiency.
The combined impact means that public infrastructure in the U.S. can be incredibly time-consuming to build and maintain; it’s no wonder that America’s
infrastructure manages only a ‘C’ grade.
For engineers, the potential of AI also means a likely evolution of their business model. Engineering firms have traditionally based their pricing models on the
number of billable hours on a given project, and most firms aren’t ready to restructure their business models to a fully AI-optimized workforce. Rather than a
time-based business model, engineering as an industry will have to explore what it means to price projects based on value produced.
But there’s also the very real concern over risk and liability — concerns held equally by engineers and infrastructure owners.
From an engineering perspective, because AI isn’t built on the same deterministic models of previous technologies, the models are “black boxes” — there is an
inherent level of opacity and uncertainty that has to be considered when looking at AI-driven results. Knowing what data an AI system was trained on becomes
incredibly important to understanding how valid and trustworthy its results are; just because an AI model says this bridge will stand up to a storm, doesn’t mean
it actually will, especially if it was trained on weak or inaccurate data.
While data validity concerns are real, to address the current scale of America’s infrastructure needs, engineers and their infrastructure clients need to begin
pushing one another to determine the right AI tools and data standards to unlock this new efficiency frontier.
This doesn’t mean that public works employees should go out and start asking generic large language models (LLMs) to create the first draft schematics for a
new water treatment plant. The purpose of AI adoption isn’t (and shouldn’t be) to replace engineers.
Instead, rather than an engineer spending dozens of hours ensuring that an asset meets all of the regulatory requirements, AI tools can check designs for
compliance and safety standards while still ensuring that engineers are the experts approving the final product.
Inthisworld,AIbecomesboththefact-checkerandthequestion-raiser,verifyinghumanworkandofferingdata-basedsuggestionsforhowthingslikemaintenance
should be improved or prioritized. It doesn’t pose a threat to the role of the engineer but instead frees engineers up to do more critical thinking about how actual
civil and structural design can be improved.
Applying caution when merging new technologies with engineering expertise is critical to ensuring project safety but shouldn’t be an excuse to demur from AI.
There are an estimated 2.6 trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure repairs needed — and engineers may just be able to tackle it, if they lean into the promise of AI.
Page 9

"ChatGPT" for the water sector - UKWIR launches ground-breaking
bespoke AI search tool
In a period of unprecedented change and scrutiny for the UK water sector, UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) have announced a significant advancement in
accessing its critical water research, with the launch of a ground-breaking bespoke AI search tool. The initiative directly supports the recommendations of the
recently published Independent Water Commission (IWC) final report, which highlighted the crucial role of collaborative, evidence-based research in navigating
the sector's profound transformation.
Mike Rose, UKWIR chief executive said:
"Atthispivotalmoment,UKWIRiscallingforevengreatercollaborationacrosstheentirewatersector,includingitssupplychain,andleadingacademicinstitutions.
"It is extremely positive that the Independent Water Commission's report directly identified UKWIR as playing a 'key role' in driving collaboration between the
industry, research institutions, and academia. This endorsement underscores the vital role we play in supporting innovation and knowledge transfer. As the
provider of impartial, science-based data, UKWIR stands ready to work closely with regulators, government, private businesses, and all other interested parties
to ensure that policy and investment decisions are informed by the best available evidence, leading to a resilient, sustainable, and trusted water future for all.
“The coming period marks a profound shift for the UK water sector, and UKWIR is fully committed to supporting our members and the wider industry every
step of the way. We are well placed to accelerate our collaborative research efforts, scaling to deliver vital evidence, and support the knowledge exchange
needed to navigate this transition successfully. Together, we can build a water future that truly serves customers, protects our environment, and restores public
confidence.”
The IWC report emphasises the need for a resilient, sustainable and trusted water future. UKWIR’s new AI search function is a direct response to this call,
providing organisations and stakeholders with rapid, cutting-edge research to inform policy and investment decisions during this critical period.
Rapid access to vital research
Historically, navigating the wealth of water research UKWIR has available online could be time-consuming, particularly when rapid, informed decision-making
is required. To speed up this process and empower the industry with readily accessible knowledge, UKWIR has embarked on a project that uses artificial
intelligence (AI) with large language models to facilitate better access to its vital water research.
The project was spearheaded by UKWIR’s office manager Carol Ham, along with UKWIR’s research and communications co-ordinator Freya Caldwell.
“We put user experience at the heart of the design process when creating our new AI search function,” explained Caldwell. “A truly effective research platform
needed to be intuitive, accessible, and capable of delivering robust and highly relevant results quickly, especially as the sector grapples with significant challenges
and opportunities. This free tool allows all stakeholders, members and non-members alike, to engage with UKWIR’s cutting-edge water research more efficiently.
Just as importantly, users need to trust the information generated – which is why our source materials are always linked to provide complete transparency and
traceability,” added Ham.
‘ChatGPT’ for the water sector
The bespoke AI search tool was created in collaboration with web developer Webree. It sits on the publication search page of UKWIR’s website, and unlike
general-purpose AI models like ChatGPT or DeepSeek, UKWIR's tool is hosted on-site and trained exclusively on UKWIR's own library of reports and tools.
This focused training, using a highly customisable Llama large language model, which was chosen for its prevalence in scientific research, ensures the tool
delivers highly relevant and accurate results, tailored specifically to the unique needs of the water sector. Meanwhile, the AI continuously learns and improves
with every interaction, ensuring its continued relevance in a rapidly evolving landscape.
The search tool offers two distinct functions:
• Contextual search: Users can ask questions in a conversational manner, for example - ‘What's the best method of removing coliforms from
drinking water?’ - and receive a list of relevant reports with specific page references.
• Generative response: Acting like a ‘ChatGPT for water research’, the search tool pulls together information from multiple reports to provide
concise summaries. Users can also specify the level of detail required, for example, asking for lists of pros and cons, or prioritised methods.
Page 10

Chlorine Sensors Waste An Estimated 6.1 Billion Gallons Of Non-
Revenue Water Every Year
Non-revenue water (NRW) losses are a significant concern for drinking water utilities worldwide because they represent water that is produced but does not
generate revenue, impacting both financial sustainability and resource management. Water is lost through leaks, pipe bursts, or overflows in the distribution
system. Aging infrastructure, poor maintenance, and high system pressures often contribute to these losses. One often overlooked source is water losses
generated from chlorine sensor waste streams. Most chlorine sensors require 70,000 gallons (265,000 litres) or more per year per sensor of treated water to
be disposed of. This is true for online DPD instruments but also amperometric sensors. With an estimated 88,268 analysers in operation across 29,423 chlorine-
using community water systems, the total wasted water is 6,178,771,200 gallons (23,390,000,000 litres) per year.
If this waste is directed into septic systems, the high chlorine content can kill beneficial micro-organisms, rendering the septic system less effective or even
causing damage. This volume of wastewater can quickly overwhelm such systems. Some municipalities have reported that the cost to install additional sewer
lines to manage this waste can exceed $100,000, a significant investment for any water treatment facility. Depending on local water rates, municipalities can see
savings ranging from $400 to $1400 per year per sensor (based on Tier two water rates range from $0.003 to $0.01per gallon.
Some areas are under “drought restrictions” and reduction of water usage is mandated.
A recent innovation addresses this problem. This new technology stems from a project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under the U.S. Department
of Defence. The objective was to create a chlorine sensor for seawater, designed for minimal maintenance and a lengthy calibration interval—up to 3,000 hours
or 125 days—intended for the U.S. Navy’s Next Generation Reverse Osmosis system. A waste stream could not be tolerated or managed.
The sensor also needed to function independently of flow rates. These tough specifications led to a novel, membrane-free design to combat biofouling through
continuous electrode cleaning. This development proved successful and found commercial use in ballast water treatment to curb the spread of invasive species
like zebra mussels. Its self-cleaning feature also made it an excellent fit for drinking water and wastewater applications. Unlike earlier amperometric sensors,
this design allows direct pipe insertion and operates without flow dependency. It subsequently received NSF61 Certification for safe exposure to drinking water.
Enter the Halogen MP-5 sensor, which introduces a new paradigm in water quality monitoring. Here's how it changes the game:
Christopher Alvarado, from LaCumbre Mutual Water Treatment Company, shares his experience, highlighting the practical benefits of the Halogen MP-5: "I did
some flow measurements with our reagent DPD system and discovered that we were using 138,000 gallons of water per year. Your system is on a side stream
and only uses 14,000 gallons. Our next installation will use your Wet Tap Sensor which has zero waste stream. We’ve been very happy with the Halogen MP5
sensor, and it has been holding up really well."
According to Derwin Dy of City of Lakewood, CA:“There are some sites that cannot be monitored due to the need for a waste stream. Halogen MP5 solves this
problem.”
• No Waste Stream: Unlike its predecessors, the MP-5 sensor does not require a waste stream. This feature alone is ground-breaking, as it
eliminates the need to manage or dispose of large volumes of treated water.
• NSF61 Certification: Only the MP5 is certified for direct exposure to drinking water under NSF61 standards, ensuring it meets stringent
public health and safety requirements.
• Install Anywhere: since the MP5 is Flow and pressure Independent, it can be inserted directly into pipes or tanks without the need for flow
or pressure regulation, offering flexibility in installation that previous sensors could not match. The sensor reads accurately in zero flow or
4 meter per second velocity. Pressure from 0 to 145 PSI has no effect on accuracy.
• Measures 5 critical water parameters: Free chlorine, Monochloramine, pH, conductivity, temperature.
• Maintenance Free for 6 to 12 months: this is a significant reduction in labor and materials. The are no membranes that require replacement.
Thesensorisself-cleaningandalsouseselectrochemicalcleaningtoachieveverylongintervalcalibrationchecks.Insomecases,amperometric
sensors must be calibrated weekly.
• Reagentless: No reagents are required or tubing replacement, saving roughly $1000 per year. This does not require a truck roll or manpower
to for monthly changes of reagents and parts or “cell cleaning.”
• No memory: The MP5 has no “memory” if exposed to zero chlorine levels for hours or even days. When chlorine residuals return, the sensor
detects them rapidly. Amperometric membrane sensors cannot achieve this without complicated systems that add cost and complexity.
Safety and customer satisfaction can be improved with a chlorine monitor that can be installed anywhere in the distribution system.
Byeliminating the wastestream,Halogen Systemsnot only helps in conserving waterbut also ensuresthat watertreatment facilities can operatemoresustainably
and cost-effectively. This technology is a clear step forward in the quest for more environmentally friendly and economically viable water management solutions.
As more water treatment facilities adopt this technology, we can expect a significant reduction in water waste, a decrease in operational costs, and an overall
improvement in water quality monitoring practices.
Page 11

A Dynamic Trio For Water Networks — Smart Metering, Hydraulic
Modelling, And AI
Non-revenue water is a global problem: Around 30% of drinking water is lost on its way to the consumer, imposing a huge economic loss that increases the
overall cost of water treatment. The good news: By combining smart metering, hydraulic modelling, and artificial intelligence (AI), utilities can effectively
increase their operational efficiency, reduce water losses, and optimize the utilization of increasingly scarce resources.
For a very long time, water utilities have treated water losses in their networks as a sort of “necessary inconvenience,” based on the conviction that reducing
non-revenue water (NRW), that is, water that is pumped into the water supply but is not or cannot be billed accordingly, will take time, is extremely costly, and
may pay off within a reasonable timespan. However, technological advances are now challenging these long-held perceptions: By applying proven, easy-to-use
digital solutions, utilities can now make the best use of data they already have from sensors and from hydraulic models — and the market is already adopting
these solutions, as a recent market report1 demonstrates: The authors state that “AI-enabled solutions are giving utilities a new tool in their arsenal to reduce
leakage and commercial losses, prioritise pipe and meter replacement and manage sewers.” The report further states that the adoption rate of AI varies across
regions and sectors, but there is a general trend that the drinking water network sector will continue to lead the way.
The main reason for this is that leak and commercial losses reduction in the water supply will offer a clear return on investment: Utilizing data and advanced
data analysis enables utilities to analyze the entire water cycle and learn a great deal about how much water they are losing and why. It also helps them to
focus their resources on those areas where a reduction in NRW will have the largest impact in terms of resource efficiency and cost-effectiveness. By employing
these solutions, some utilities have managed to reduce NRW by up to 50%. Additionally, they have reduced leakage detection time and costs for in-field crews,
minimized penalties and collateral damage through early leak detection, increased revenue by preventing commercial losses, and optimized their investment
plans for pipe and meter replacement.
A Compelling Business Case
Two examples of how smart water loss detection will immediately improve the bottom line of utilities can be found in Spain. Servicios de Txingudi, the public
utility responsible for the water supply in the northern Spanish municipalities of Irun and Hondarribia, is leveraging the SIWA Leak Finder app to address water
loss. SIWA Leak Finder is a software solution for detecting and pre-locating leaks in water transport and distribution networks by using artificial intelligence to
analyze real-time flow data. Thanks to AI, the system is capable of recognizing seasonal patterns influenced by tourism and weather conditions. Servicios de
Txingudi implemented SIWA Leak Finder across the entire network covering 285 km (187 miles) of pipes and trained the solution on a three-week dataset. Since
then, SIWA Leak Finder detected over 10,000 events, including leaks, pressure issues, chlorine anomalies, sensor failures, data transmission problems, and theft
— and has helped operators detect and repair leaks quickly while minimizing false alarms.
At EMAYA, the municipal public utility company that manages the water cycle for Palma de Mallorca, SIWA Meter Data Analytics has accompanied a smart
metering implementation project with the aim of equipping 100% of Palma with smart meters. The solution was initially populated with data from almost
100,000 water meters with bimonthly readings. Historical readings were also included, as were key features of each water meter, such as meter size, type,
installation date, and activity. In under three years, SIWA Meter Data Analytics has helped cut metering error by 23% (from 3.9% to 3%). What’s more, the
solution optimizes meter replacement: meters replaced in line with the criteria showed eight times more revenue than with age-based replacements, which was
the previous replacement criteria.
Enabling A Better Understanding Of Consumption And Networks
The challenges faced by Servicios de Txingudi and EMAYA are not just typical of utilities in Spain. Their problems were the same as those faced by many water
operators worldwide: significant water losses, often caused by leaks that are hard or even impossible to detect with conventional methods, data inconsistencies,
inefficient manual operations, a shortage of staff both in the office and in the field, and increasingly strict regulations and penalties. At the core of these
issues is a lack of understanding on how AI can support water consumption knowledge and networks behavior. Adopting smart metering, hydraulic modelling,
and AI-driven solutions can help utilities differentiate anomalies from normal consumption patterns: Smart metering enables timely data collection of water
consumption. This data served as input for both hydraulic models and AI systems, moving beyond billing purposes to include leak detection, theft identification,
and improvement of minimum night flows analysis. Using data from smart meters, connecting them to a hydraulic model via a network twin, and adding AI on
top helps increase accuracy by simulating “what-if” scenarios, optimize sensor placement, and pre-locate leaks or operational anomalies. Artificial intelligence
will enable utilities to classify anomalies, optimize operational performance, and improve data quality by detecting outliers and non-plausible data and filling
gaps, enabling more reliable decision-making.
Generating Immediate Returns
The business benefits of a smart, data-driven approach to reducing non-revenue water are obvious: Utilities can reduce the amount of surplus treated water,
which will lower operating costs and carbon footprint; they can maintain pipes and meters more efficiently; and they can better manage and protect resources.
Utilizing advanced AI algorithms, solutions such as SIWA Leak Finder can identify leaks as small as 0.2 litres per second. This precision enables utilities to detect
and address leaks promptly, minimizing water loss, collateral damage, and penalties. Analyzing smart and conventional water meters with advanced data
analytics not only helps to detect leaks, but can also optimize meter replacement programs, with many utilities have found a return on investment of less than
12 months by replacing poorly performing meters. And finally, smart meter data management empowers water utilities and consumers with transparent and
trustworthy information about meter performance and customer-side leakage, reduce costly billing errors, and strengthen consumer communication and trust.
Leaping Ahead With Proven Technologies
So why are adoption rates still low compared to other industries such as oil and gas, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, just to name a few? One reason may
be that utilities are concerned about the extent to which these technologies can be used with success and at a reasonable cost while ensuring high security
standards. In fact, the water sector as a whole is often described as laggard in the adoption of digital technology. But the sector now has the unique opportunity
to leap ahead: Advances in AI, software, and communications technologies are now bringing solutions to the market that can identify opportunities to reduce
NRW at ever-decreasing costs. With an extensive portfolio of applications for leak detection, meter data management, asset management, cybersecurity, and
process optimization, Siemens promotes the easy introduction and adoption of digital technologies for smart water distribution. Based on mature systems and
solutions, smart, data-driven decision-making is now in the reach of every utility. By leveraging AI across integrated platforms, utilities can significantly reduce
non-revenue water. Combining smart metering, hydraulic modelling, and artificial intelligence, utilities can now create a powerful ecosystem that enables water
utilities to detect leaks with unprecedented accuracy, analyze consumption patterns in real-time, and optimize meter management for maximum efficiency.
Page 12

Feature Article
Thinking bigger - the need for a
national monitoring strategy
Over the past ten years the UK has been through what can only be described as a monitoring revolution. Before then most of the wastewater network was
unmonitored apart from monitoring and control for pumping stations and floats measuring when emergency overflows were being used. Monitoring has
increased significantly by the water companies but there are also huge amounts of testing of the water environment and how wastewater, agriculture, highway
drainage and other sources of pollution are affecting our water environment. It asks the question as to whether or not a more nationalised monitoring strategy is
needed albeit with local variations as needs be. Within the wastewater industry at the current time in England & Wales we have monitoring as shown in figure 1
Figure 1: A simplified representation of the wastewater system complete with current and some of the future monitoring
Although figure 1 represents a simplified system and in reality there will be variations on the same theme the monitoring systems that have been or will be
installed in more detail are as follows:
• Event Duration Monitors (EDM) on combined storm overflows (approximately 14,500) which up until now have been recording at 15-minute
intervals but are set to switch to 2-minute intervals. This includes the discharge to the environment from wastewater treatment works
storm tanks.
• Storm Duration Monitors (SDMs) on the flow to storm tank at wastewater treatment works (approximately 2,000) which will record at
2-minute intervals but as this poses a challenge for 15-minute interval recording a number of water companies are switching to 1-minute
intervals.
• Pass Forward Flow Meters (PFF) on the FFT point of the treatment works which work in conjunction with the storm duration monitor
(approximately2,000)toensurethatthewatercompaniesarecomplyingwiththeirenvironmentalpermitsandtreatingatleasttheminimum
pass forward flows that they should treat. These are recording at 2-minute monitoring but again some water companies are recording at a
1-minute level. There is also the potential for a number of ancillary meters in this category due to various returns on the treatment works
(such as washwater flows) which needed to be deducted from the total flow to ensure exact compliance.
• Emergency Overflow Duration Monitors (EODMs) which are currently being installed on all emergency overflows to the environment to
replace the floats that used to do this duty, there are approximately 6,000 EDOMs that will be installed between 2025 and 2035. These will
record at 2-minutes
• Emergency Overflow Pass Forward Flow (EOPFF) which like the EDOMS are currently being installed across England & Wales and are up to
1,000 flow meters, recording at 2-minutes, on CSOs where there is also an emergency overflow.
• Continuous Water Quality Monitoring (CWQM) which are being installed under Section 82 of the Environment Act (2021) in rivers upstream
and downstream of wastewater discharges to the environment. These are being clustered so not all of the approximately 56,000 overflows
will be monitored by a set of 2 devices (1 monitoring upstream and the other downstream) but all overflows will be monitored. These will
record hourly but will have the ability to switch to 15-minute monitoring.
• Sewer Level Monitoring (SLMs) over the past 5-6 years the water companies, due to changes in technology, have been installing hundreds
of thousands of sewer level monitors to work with machine learning platforms to understand where sewers are starting to get blocked,
mainly due to the fats, oils and greases and the formation of fatbergs and blockages due to wet wipes. This is not a regulatory requirement
but water companies are undertaking this monitoring to improve service to customers and avoid pollution incidents, where possible, due
to sewer blockages.
• Final Effluent Monitoring (FE Monitoring) some water companies have measured the quality of the final effluent that they discharge from
the wastewater treatment works on an on-line basis as well as the routine manual testing that is performed all of the time and required
Page 13

by environmental permits. Monitoring final effluent on-line is not a regulatory requirement and is being done voluntarily by some water
companies but there is ongoing work to make this a regulatory requirement but there are technological limitations and the need to use
surrogate parameters.
If all of this monitoring is installed England & Wales will have what is likely to be the most monitored wastewater system in the world producing around 24
million pieces of data on a daily basis (not including sewer level monitors) but for what purpose.
The purpose of monitoring the wastewater system.
All monitoring that is installed needs a purpose and a value to the environment and ultimately the customer who is paying for as monitoring in any of its forms
costs alot of money to install and maintain. If for example we take a sewer level monitor it costs around £200 and over its life of 5 years will have a whole life cost
of around £1,000. To take this cost comparison to the other extreme the cost allowance for a CWQM monitor in PR24 was £165,000 with an annual maintenance
cost of £12,000 per annum making the 5-year cost £225,000.
This was a question that was indirectly raised in the Integrated Water Commission report by Sir Jon Cunliffe when he questioned the cost and the value of the
CWQM programme and suggested that it could be delivered more efficiently using technology. This was a pretty vague statement which would probably have
been expanded on if the commission were given more time.
So, why is the cost relatively high?
Well firstly, apart from the sewer level monitoring and any FE monitoring that is currently installed it is a regulatory requirement, the water companies are
required by law under their environmental permits to do it. The cost of doing that monitoring is rightly driven upwards by requirements to ensure the quality
of the data under the MCERTS programme (apart from EDMs) and stringent requirements to ensure that the data is recorded within certain service level
requirements and at certain frequencies. This drives up both the governance costs and the maintenance duties that have to be performed on each and every
device. An example of this is the EDM monitors on CSOs are now no longer permitted to be out of service for more than 24 hours. In order to achieve this
somebody who is trained in the piece of equipment has to be on standby 24 hours a day 365 days a year. As most of these devices are installed in dangerous
places its not one person its at least 2 if not 3 per company as well as having the equipment on standby to replace it all.
Secondly it the amount of data that is being produced both in terms of the location and in terms of the frequency of the data. All of the EDMs, SLMs, CWQM
monitors are remote devices that rely on batteries and the equivalent of a mobile phone to communicate with the outside world on an hourly basis creating
hundreds of thousands of signals back from remote places pretty much all of the time. This level of data availability comes at a quite a high cost.
What is the value of all of this monitoring?
Compliance – The first value is ensuring that the water companies are complying with their environmental permits and operating as they
should be operating. A number of the categories of devices that have been installed are to achieve this.
Flow Compliance – The SDM and PFF monitors are there to ensure that the water companies are treating all of the wastewater that they
should be treating. The monitor can also be used to monitor compliance with the Dry Weather Flow Consent measured as the total daily
volume which drives the need for growth at a wastewater treatment works and allows both the Environment Agency and Water Company
to understand where investment is needed
Spill Monitoring & Compliance– The original CSO monitoring was to understand where the collection network of sewers is coming under
stress and there is a need to improve the collection network. The same can be said for Emergency Overflows but more often than not this
will refer to where the water company assets need to be maintained with more frequency. Of course related to this is SLM monitoring that
is used to understand where sewer block. The frequency of sewer blockages has increased with modern life and the use of wet wipes which
act as focal point for fats, oils and greases to congeal around. Spills to the environment should happen in extreme events although the
annual spill figures that the country sees on a real-time basis shows there is some work to do
Quality Compliance – This is not something that is monitored on-line at the moment as the whole quality of wastewater was designed in
the early 20th century and is focussed around manual techniques that aren't fully possible to monitor as yet but some water companies do
monitor final effluent using surrogate parameters. It is certainly not fully applicable to compliance as yet but is potentially set to be in the
future. The CWQM programme of monitoring river environments is set to be used on a compliance basis but until the governance of the
data is fully resolved any data collected, unless fully traceable will not provide the evidential quality that is needed.
Environmental Improvements is the second and almost biggest reason to undertake monitoring. The installation of EDMs across the wastewater system has
raised the issue of the performance of the wastewater system in a very public way. There has been under-investment in the wastewater system for whatever
reason (I’ll leave others to argue the case of why it has happened) There is the old adage that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” or to paraphrase this
quote “we weren't managing what we weren't measuring,” which is somewhat unfair but in truth the level of spills was not fully visible to the industry until we
started measuring it.
Now that things are being measured some of the water companies are managing to improve things. If we look beyond the rhetoric that is produced each March
with the publication of the storm overflow data there are improvements being made and still some way to go. What we cannot let ourselves be fooled by is
worsening of the figures in wet years and improvements in dry years. These are the natural cycles that are systems are affected by and any reduction in spills
promised has to be put into context of climatic variation. The analysis of storm spill data is analysed in the sub-box
Page 14

However, now that we are measuring in some aspects and will be in others there will be environmental improvements. An example of this is the installation of
hundreds of thousands of sewer level monitors across England & Wales. The data from these monitors feed machine learning platforms that give a very good
indication that the sewer is starting to block and allows the water company to take action before it becomes a problem. The latest development in this area is
insights in inflow and infiltration into sewers that takes capacity away and causes more frequent spilling and pollution incidents. Infiltration has been notoriously
difficult to pinpoint so anything that will help identify where investment is needed to reduce it will help the environment.
Water Company Performance & the 50% reduction target
The problem that we see each year is that when the number of spills is reported to the general public, the simple analysis of the data does not go far enough
and examine the performance of each company and if the water companies analyse the data and report their own performance it is very easy for the public
to believe that the data is being “manipulated,” or doesn't tell the correct picture as the context of a year in terms of meteorological standards and the
recording of data needs to be understood as certainly between 2016 and 2020 the number of EDM monitors were rapidly increasing. If you actually look at
the detail of the data a different picture of performance is shown but how to communicate this isn't easy.
This shows the performance of all of the water companies between 2020 and 2024 when the data was more or less normalised in terms of the numbers of
monitors. It’s know across the industry that 2020, 2023 and 2024 were “wet years” with 2020 and 2024 comparable. If we look at the data it can be seen
that United Utilities between 2020 and 2024 improved markedly. Some of this improvement though is that in 2024 the “wet year” was biased towards the
South East hence why we see a marked decrease in performance with Anglian Water, Thames Water and no improvement with Southern Water who have
very actively been trying to reduce Storm Overflows.
This is why when the target of reducing storm overflows by 50% was an unwise statement as the bias will skew the performance depending if a 2024 baseline
is baseline is used. It could be, as 2025 looks to be a dry year that 1 or 2 of the companies could achieve the 50% reduction with just climatic variability.
What we can see in the chart is if we take a 50% target based upon the 2024 data and use normalised data from 2022 (the last dry year) then Anglian Water
would actually achieve the 50% reduction target and Thames Water would almost achieve it. However United Utilities and Severn Trent Water who were not
affected as much by the climatic conditions in 2024 would have a more difficult time of achieving the target especially considering alot of the improvements
both companies have already made. With United Utilities and Yorkshire Water this is shown if we take an average of the 2023 and 2024 performance and
apply the 50% reduction to an average of the two years the 50% target allows a slightly looser allowance to be achieved for those two companies. In reality
an average of at least three years should be used but arguably we simply haven't had enough data as yet to get a reliable 50% target.
Page 15

Lastly, the monitoring of the quality of rivers will help and the CWQM programme has its value. Unfortunately this value is limited by monitoring just water
company overflows and this is an unwelcome unconscious bias that the monitoring programme will deliver. It is know by the measure source apportionment
that the water industry accounts for about 35% of riverine pollution so the maximum that the CWQM programme will monitor is that leaving around 65%of
pollution unmonitored. If the monitors of the CWQM programme were actually installed in the correct place then elements such as agricultural pollution could
also be monitored. This doesn’t mean that the water company contributions are monitored any less it just means that pollution is monitored more holistically.
Changes to the CWQM programme such as monitoring in the correct place and using the investment to install more final effluent monitoring as well as
potentially having more intensive dynamic monitoring would provide a better value to both the public and the environment itself. It also would enable enhanced
monitoring to be installed in inland bathing water areas targeted so the root causes of pollution in those specific areas can be monitored and managed in a much
more effective manner.
Targeted Capital Investment – The Storm Overflow Reduction Plan highlighted significant investment is needed to improve environmental
water quality and reduce the number of storm overflows. Everyone will argue that it is not the number of overflows but the degree of
harm that is caused. The amount of investment required was identified as £56 billion or approximately £3,500 per household in England &
Wales. Between 2025 – 2030 a total of £11billion is being spend to improve storm overflow performance. This is before the monitoring is
installed which is again unfortunate as the monitoring will be able to target where investment is needed to improve the water environment.
Of course on wastewater treatment works the flow is being monitored and the locations for the need for investment identified. This could
be bigger storm tanks or it could be more sustainable urban drainage systems within the collection network. With the monitoring data we
will not only understand where things need to change but also by how much. This will help restrict the investment that is needed to take a
chunk out of the £56billion investment that has been identified and reduce the impact on customer bills.
Public trust – One of the things that monitoring will achieve is to enable the public to start trusting the industry is doing the right thing.
Public trust was damaged significantly when the storm overflow data was published. This was unfortunately magnified by poor installation
of alot of the monitors. A high degree of error in this data has been present in the past and monitoring still is not perfect. This is not helped
by the fact that there is only a good practice guide and no standard of installation for EDMs. Even the good practice guide does not allow
for any degree of the quality of the monitoring and the fact that the monitoring wasn't included under the Environment Agency's MCERTS
programme from the start which would have given a level of governance of the data was, in hindsight, unfortunate.
Of course EDM monitoring and storm overflows are required to be published under Section 81 of the Environment Act 2021 within 1 hour and in such a way that
the public can understand. EDMs are published under the National Storm Overflows Hub available on the Water UK website and presumably this will be joined
by the data produced by SDMs and EODMs in the future although if this is to use the storm overflows hub there will need to be significant changes so that it is
easily understandable by the public. This is a project being looked at by the Water Industry research body, UKWIR.
This will be further complicated when CWQM data starts to be published and in reality this is the next missed opportunity and why monitoring of the rivers
holistically should be considered as soon as possible before too many installations are installed. There is no reason why the industry can't install the monitoring
so that it feeds a Digital Twin of the river catchments, the monitoring together with river modelling which already exists can be made to inform not only the public
but all river stakeholders as to the state of river environment. This also fits into the government strategy of a National Digital Twin and the Gemini Principles.
It may take time to achieve but by the time that all of the monitors are installed a national Digital Twin of the river basins of England & Wales is a real possibility.
Can we deliver CWQM more efficiently
How does the industry actually deliver CWQM? In the original legislation for Section 82 the letter of the law would have water companies deliver a monitor
upstream and downstream of each and every overflow. This would see roughly 48,000 monitoring stations across 24,000 locations installed across the
country at a cost based on the PR24 submission of £133,400 of almost £6.4 billion (assuming that the allowed sum is per upstream or downstream), very
early on DEFRA decided to take a clustering approach to limit the number of survey sites and the amount of investment needed. This has meant in the current
delivery programme that is set to deliver 6,485 sites the investment is limited to £866 million to deliver approximately a 1/3rd of the total installations.
However, this sensible approach has been challenged by the Cunliffe report as still to expensive to deliver and maintain. This is because it focusses on the
water company Storm Overflows and not monitoring the river water quality itself.
Looking at a case study of the approach I picked a point at random on the National Storm Overflows Hub and picked the Savick Brook, Eaves Brook and
their drainage into the River Ribble in the city of Preston. Tracing these two brooks back a sensible distance I have 14 combined storm overflows including
2 pumping stations in a distance of approximately 10km if I take the combined length of the two brooks. The area is shown in the figure below along with a
reference table of all of the CSOs.
Not taking a clustering approach and monitoring upstream and downstream of each overflow the number of monitoring stations would need to be 28 in
total at a cost of £3.74 million to install and an annual cost of £288,000 to maintain. Taking a sensible approach monitoring upstream of the first monitoring
point and downstream of the last point on the two brooks would reduce the number to 18 with a £2.4 million installation cost. If the CSOs are clustered
together in reasonable clusters the number of monitoring stations could reasonably be reduced to 12 which is a big reduction. However if we take the critical
points of change from the river basis this number could be reduced to 7 in number whilst also providing effective and more holistic monitoring. The cost of
the monitoring to the customer would be £933,800 with an annual cost of £84,000 This is not a cost saving for the water company as the total investment
required would still need to be spent but could be used in installing final effluent monitoring at the wastewater treatment works to the west of these CSOs to
replace the OSM programme, it could be spent on dynamic monitoring where the permanent monitoring has identified issues and intensive monitoring needs
to be undertaken or used to fund citizen science projects or catchment representation at a local level to ensure that the water environment is being protected.
The following graphic shows just two of the brooks and the CSOs leading to the River Ribble in Preston
Page 16

A need for national wastewater monitoring strategy
All of this points to the need for a national wastewater monitoring strategy. Over the past ten years and over the next ten years the amount of monitoring that
is going to be available under regulatory requirements is eye-watering and the cost of installing and maintaining all of this monitoring equally so. In order to
justify this level of monitoring the amount of value to the public has to be realised. In some ways we have allowed monitoring, as the “tail,” to “wag the dog”.
The individual programmes on their own make sense and have value but the value as a whole has never been understood with a holistic value understood. Nor
have any of the barriers to this piecemeal installation of monitoring being understood. The reason why the EDM programme can be seen as a partial failure is
that it was delivered with no national standard and with the technology and skills not fully developed within the water industry. At least one water company
has had to replace pretty much the entire asset base as the monitoring technology was not performing as well as it should in the application that it was used in.
Sewer Level Monitoring is an area where we could see the right response and was technology driven. The need within the industry was seen and monitoring
technology was developed when the opportunity was created. Technical leadership within the supply chain and water companies identified the need and
platforms and monitoring technology was created. An example of this was in 2015 a project that installed sewer level monitoring struggled to install a handful
in the sewers. Only 5 years later over 1,000 had been installed and 5 years after than (i.e. now) tens of thousands of sewer level monitors have been installed.
The market was created and the supply chain reacted to the technological need.
How do we achieve this on a national wastewater monitoring basis, by putting the market in place with monitoring outcomes and thus creating a need to be
developed and delivered. If our aim is a monitored water environment and we know what we want to monitor and how to get the best insight from it then the
work can begin to fill in the gaps to develop the processes, to develop the people and skills, to develop the technology to enable the overall goal of monitoring
to manage our river systems for both people to enjoy and the health of the river environment to thrive.
CWQM monitoring must happen but it must happen in an effective and governable way identified in the IWC report. This is a simplified case study and an
estimation of the clustering has been taken as it needs to be fully modelled as to what is most appropriate but it does open the question as to whether the
water companies are being asked to monitor sites in the most effective way or whether a reassessment of not what we are monitoring but where we are
monitoring using local knowledge and river-based monitoring rather than over-flow based monitoring is not more appropriate.
One way is to have multiple parties monitoring different aspects in a coordinated way. There has been some fantastic work done under different monitoring
projects. An example is the long term microbiological monitoring of Lake Windermere (Most of Windermere polluted with sewage bacteria, finds biggest
survey of its kind or the work that is being done on a council basis down in Devon these projects are examples of what can be done but must be coordinated
to get the best value for the population as the risk is that we miss the value of working at a holistic level and there is a risk of duplication. This should be
coordinated on both a national and a regional basis and is a key role for the Integrated Water Commissions planning authority approach to take in the future
when they are formed taking both an engineering and a scientific approach to the water quality testing of our aquatic environment.
Page 17

Case Study
Proactive Sewer Monitoring and
Intervention
Background
StormHarvester and Anglian Water began working together in 2022 as part of Anglian Water’s Dynamic Sewer Visualisation (DSV) programme. The Anglian
Water Dynamic Sewer Visualisation (DSV) programme was launched in February 2023. Their proactive sewer monitoring programme was designed to identify
restrictions in the network before they turned into an escape and cause negative impact on their customer and the environment. To date, StormHarvester has
installed 50,000 sensors, providing analytics to Anglian Water to allow for wastewater insights and blockages to be pro-actively identified.
The challenge
Sewer blockages are a major cause of pollution and flooding incidents, often only detected once damage has occurred. Across the water industry the cost to
water companies and the customer has been identified in excess of £200 million and Anglian Water has identified that 80% of sewer blockages are caused by
a combination fats, oils, greases and wet wipes. All of this increases the risk of storm overflows and adverse environment impact. For this case study Anglian
Water needed a way to:
• Detect developing blockages early, to get ahead of potential issues before they become a negative impact.
• Prioritise high-risk areas such as known pollution or flooding hotspots.
• Move away from a reactive approach and build a scalable solution for proactive risk reduction.
Our Approach
StormHarvester provided the analytics for the DSV programme by integrating its machine learning platform and hyper-local rainfall prediction technology
into Anglian Water’s operational systems. StormHarvester deployed over 50,000 sensors across Anglian Water’s network, while monitoring sewer behaviour,
identifying early-stage blockages and establishing restrictions before they became critical. These insights were actioned by Anglian Water’s reactive and
proactive teams, enabling smarter decision-making and targeted intervention.
To look at an example of how this works an example blockage and the time-line of the blockage clearance can be seen in figure 1.
Results
ThecollaborationbetweenStormHarvesterandAnglianWaterhasdeliveredsignificantoperationalandenvironmentalbenefits.Sincelaunchingtheprogramme,
5,123 jobs resulted in a proactive blockage often getting smaller easy to clear blockages rather than massive blockages that can take some time to clear.
StormHarvester’s platform achieved a 70% hit rate on predicted blockages, demonstrating high accuracy and actionable insight.
Crucially, many of these blockages occurred in high-risk areas, including 729 pollution-prone and 4,394 flood-risk locations. Anglian Water Expanded their
Dynamic Sewer Visualisation programme to 42,000 monitors. This resulted in a 418% increase in proactive blockage clearance making the programme one of
the largest in the UK.
The programme’s success was made possible through close collaboration between Anglian Water, sensor providers, and StormHarvester for proactive sewer
management. StormHarvester has been key to this milestone and proactive risk reduction, without being able to pro-actively identify restrictions forming in
their sewers Anglian Water would be blind to some of the near misses. It not only reduced the number of near-misses and potential pollution incidents but
has also established a data-driven way of working, setting a strong foundation for continued innovation in proactive sewer management.
An example of the blockage time-line
14 July - Sewer level breaches
threshold. StormHarvester system
generates an alert to Anglian Water
15 July - Utility crew attended the
site and removed the blockage. Rags
causing the obstruction were retrieved,
the alarm was cleaned, and normal
service was restored.
16 July - Sewer level returns to previous
behaviour within thresholds.
Figure 1: An example of a sewer blockage and the blockage time-line
Page 18

Sensor for Water Interest Group Workshops
The Sensors for Water Interest Group has moved their workshops for the foreseeable future to an online webinar format. The next workshops
are:
24th-25th September - Sensing in Water
11th November - Advancing Solutions for the Water Industry
Sensing in Water 2025
Hollywell Park Conference Centre, Loughborough
24th - 25th September 2025
Sensing in Water 2025 is set to be a dynamic gathering of professionals across the water sector, dedicated to exploring the latest in sensor
technology and its applications for water quality, management, and innovation. Hosted at the state-of-the-art Holywell Park Conference Centre
in Loughborough, this two-day event will feature cutting-edge presentations, hands-on exhibitions, and valuable opportunities for networking
with industry leaders, utilities, researchers, and technology providers.
Whether you're focused on water monitoring, smart technology, or emerging trends, Sensing in Water 2025 will offer fresh insights and
collaborative opportunities. Keep an eye out for more details on how to register and submit abstracts!
MCERTS Flow & EDM Training for the Water Industry
Vega Control Systems - West Sussex
September 2025
In a new training course offered led by AtkinsRéalis and supported by Dr Carl Wordsworth of NEL and Steven French of Vega Control
s Limited attendees on this course will be taken through training on MCERTS from the first steps in understanding what is MCERTS
for Flow and Spills is to installing and maintaining the physical assets to setting up management systems to run a whole regulatory
monitoring system.
Page 19
Conferences, Events,
Seminars & Studies
Conferences, Seminars & Events
2025 Conference Calendar

CONFERENCE EXHIBITION GALA DINNER
24th & 25th September 2025
Holywell Park Conference Centre &
Burleigh Court Hotel,
Loughborough, UK
SENSING IN
20
25
WATER
info@swig.org.uk www.swig.org.uk
www.swig.org.uk
info@swig.org.uk
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SUBMIT ABSTRACTS FOR PRESENTATIONS
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Water Industry Process Automation & Control Monthly - September 2025

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Water Industry Process Automation & Control Monthly - September 2025