WIPAC Monthly - December 2015

WIPAC MONTHLYThe Monthly Update from Water Industry Process Automation & Control
www.wipac.org.uk Issue 12/2015 - December

In this Issue
Editorial.............................................................................................................................. 3
Industry News..................................................................................................................... 4 - 9
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.
Water & the Internet of Things......................................................................................... 10-11
An interesting opinion piece this month from Fred Greguras of Royse Law looking at the elements of the Internet of
Things with particular reflection on California and also the legal implications surrounding its use.

WITS-DNP3 Protocol Adoption Process............................................................................. 12-13
The DNP3 based Water Industry Telemetry Standard (WITS-DNP3) is set to become a standard for telemetry in the UK.
The article in this months edition, which was first published on the WITS Protocol website, reports on the progress of
adoption within the UK and how to adopt the WITS protocol.
The Instrumentation Lifecycle in the UK Water Industry: From Concept to Replacement... 14-16
In an article by Group Manager, Oliver Grievson, this month he explains his views on instrumentation in the UK Water
Industry and how better definition of the purpose of instrumentation is required in order to get value out of the data
that the industry produces. The article goes through the different stages of the asset life of the instruments and the
instrumentation systems installed and how fundamental changes are needed.
What’s driving sensor development?................................................................................ 16-17
In an article produced by Graham Meller the question of what is driving sensor development within the Water Industry
from the need to manage ever tightening consents to the need to operate efficiently
GIS - Tapping its business potential................................................................................... 18-19
GIS is an ever developing discipline within the Water Industry and forms the bases of some of the most useful tools that
we as an industry use. This article by Paul Hart a consultant in data management and analytics at Black & Veatch looks
at the potential of greater GIS adoption and how it can realise benefits across the industry
Using GIS to improve Water Incident Management in Los Angeles.................................... 20
A case study from the US that demonstrates the use in Water Incident Management that GIS can have and the benefits
it can deliver
Workshops, Conferences & Seminars............................................................................... 21-22
The highlights of the conferences and workshops in the coming months

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.
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
The image on the front cover is a Aerial Lidar Image of Central London taken by the England & Wales Environment Agency’s aerial
surveying team

From the Editor

In the last few days of each year I like to look back and see what has happened in a year, how much of the tick list that I
set myself at the beginning of last year I have done (about 75% this year) and also on a much wider scale insofar as the
Water Industry. For me at least it helps to see where we are as an industry and potentially where we want to go.
In 2015 of course there have been some persistent themes that have emerged, whether or not there is a future in these
themes only time will tell but for the moment let’s take a look at some of them
The Internet of Things (IoT) or to my mind it’s bigger more “Industrial” brother the IIoT, the whole phenomenon of cloud
computing and so on. What is sure is that outside of the Water Industry things are developing. Samsung this year brought
out their home hub type device that allows those who care to remote monitor their homes with a variety of switches,
sensors and cameras. Those of you who are tech and security minded will be screaming into their tea by now saying you
are giving anyone who is technologically savvy an open view straight into your home and making it easy for those who
are less than honestly minded. Security issues aside for a moment (for the moment, I’m coming to it later) it is a big
opportunity missed. We have seen that gamification and knowledge of what water (or other home consumable) can do
to lower demand and help detect leakage and this is one more thing that could help. My vision in this has been for awhile
a mini PLC device in each newly built home (with government sponsorship) that will act as a hub for the utilities, a mini building management system. This
sounds fancy but needn’t be. If asked the question, when buying a new house whether or not I would pay £2-3k more for such a system that would be help
save ten times that over its asset life then of course the answer is going to be yes.
Cloud computing etc....(security is next honest)...there is a large amount of nervousness about the whole phenomenon. The uploading of data, especially
sensitive data into the cloud is going to be an area where those in security are going to be rightly nervous about taking control of the data away from company
servers especially where that data has a requirement to be secure (for instance customer data). It is something within the industry that is going to take alot of
convincing of the various security specialists.
Security (told you it was next) - It has been a year where there has been a focus on it with several high profile hacks on websites that have focused the public
on real life dangers. From a Water Industry point of view I hosted, through the Sensors for Water Interest Group, the security workshop in February of this year
and it certainly seems to have galvanised some of the water companies to instigate security training within the Water Industry and has also (to me at least)
highlighted that there are great organisations out there who tirelessly work in the background to advise on things like Phishing whether its with a “Spear” or
not as well as all of the other weird and wonderful ways in which are systems can get attacked. It was certainly an education for me and is probably a subject
that needs to be continually touched on and with the advent of the “connected” industry we are likely to touch on more and more.
Thinking of connectability the final roundup of 2015 has to touch on the physical connectability of the Water Industry and how it is coming together in a much
holistic approach, the various discussions that have happend with the “Smart Water Network” both on the potable and wastewater side of the business has
shown how much potential there is. We have seen it in past years with the work that companies such as TaKaDu and I2O have done (in potable water) and
I whenever I see the leaders of those companies my first question is “when are they coming into the wastewater side of the business?” However it isn’t just
on the network where the opportunities exist and this has been recognised by the Water Industry. For years now we have had Advanced Process Control at
treatment work and we have also had the desire to connect (at least in terms of processes) the treatment works to the network and ultimately the customer.
Its a concept that has been around for at least the past 40 years but we have never quite realised it as yet. The benefits have been studied and in short the
work by David Butler and his team at the University of Exeter showed that, in wastewater, we can simply achieve tighter standards for less money if we have
an overall control of the system. As this is the way the industry is going this Win Win situation must be implemented if the industry is to have a chance moving
forward. For those of you who have the time it is well worth reading the PhD of one of David’s (now ex) students, Fanlin Meng.
What is clear is the approach that the Water Companies are taking and this connected, systematic approach is something that is actively being studied and
brought to the forefront. This does mean a clean sweep of the technologies that we have used in the past and tools such as SCADA are still and will always be
the operational tool of choice of collecting data and controlling the operational systems that we have. What we have now is a tool, with the Internet of Things,
that has potential to assist in the way that we operate and potentially interact with the customer as these technologies exist and are only going to develop
further and further and further. What the Water Industry (and other utility based industries) have to do is how they can potentially exploit this tool with the
ever watchful thought that security must be paramount
Have a good month and best wishes for the New Year
Oliver

The Institute of Water Eastern Section each year hosts the very popular “Dragon’s Den” event where innovators pitch to “Dragon’s” from some of the Eastern
areas leaders within the Water Industry. Chaired by Steve Kaye, Head of Innovation at Anglian Water, this event introduces the challenges and opportunities
associated with Innovation in the Water Industry.
This year’s innovators will pitch to Anglian Water’s CEO, Peter Simpson and Cranfield University’s Professor Tom Stephenson will be joined by eastern area pres-
ident Paul Valleley as the firebreathing dragons for the day
The event also features an interesting insight into future challenges in the build up to the pitches recognising that the Water Industry is changing. Challenges
such as climate change, growth, environmental standards, the economic environment and customer expectations, mean that new ideas and flexible responses
are needed, if we are to continue to provide our services in a safe and reliable way.
The event takes place on Tuesday 19th January at the Greater Peterborough University Technical College in Peterborough in the UK.
The winning organisation will represent the Eastern Area at the National Innovation Awards in 2016.
The Water & Energy Exchange has recently released a call for entrants into their annual innovation awards with a gala awards ceremony at their global event
which will take place in Lisbon from the 29th February to 2nd March. The Innovation Awards are open to all companies and organisations that have made a
significant contribution to the Water and Waste Water sector, with specific emphasis on environmental considerations, a sustainable future, financial resilience
and innovation. More details are available on the WEX global awards website which can be accessed by clicking here.
In total there are 9 categories in the competition and these include:
1. Process Technology - This award recognises an innovative process or a part of a process chosen from across the entire spectrum of water and wastewater
treatment including waste to value. Entries should be able to demonstrate innovative applications of existing or new processes in the entire cycle related to
potable water production through to wastewater treatment and disposal..
2. Water & Energy - The Water and Energy award will identify and promote energy saving innovations in moving, treating and using water and wastewater. The
world’s future water supply system is an energy-efficient one and this award will highlight the ideas, applications and solutions that will get us there. This
award will recognise the best project, process or application to demonstrate innovation in renewable energy, alternative energy sources, efficient energy
use or the development of energy production methods that reduce energy and water intensity
3. Water & Wastewater Management - This award recognises innovation in the realization of sustainable water and/or wastewater management. Entries will
focus on a project or programme of water management that recognizes excellence in any area of development related to sustainable water management
and demonstrates significant progress towards the sustainable management of water resources in an urban environment
4. Operations - The Operations award will recognise outstanding innovations or innovative contributions to the life-cycle economy, efficiency and reliability of
any water, wastewater, desalination or collective plant within the sector. Entrants will be required to successfully illustrate how they have strived towards
operational excellence, by planning and adopting innovative methods to protect water at its source, treat it to the highest standards, deliver it to homes
and businesses, then collect and treat wastewater before reintroducing it safely back into the environment in a more advanced and efficient way whilst
maximising customer and shareholder value
5. Infrastructure - This award will recognise significant innovative wet infrastructure projects and initiatives within the water industry and will show unique
or outstanding features of the initiative, which sets it apart from common practice. The entry will demonstrate or strongly anticipate environmental, social
and/or water resource benefits as well as show excellence in social, economic and environmental design considerations.
6. Technology - This prestigious award will recognise outstanding usage, manufacture or production of innovative products, materials or technologies that are
creating substantial benefits to the worlds water needs. The submissions must show a significant achievement in design, operation, maintenance or process
change resulting in demonstrated long-term water quality improvement.
7. Financing Partnerships
8. Desalination Project Award
9. Best Project Award - This award will recognise the best project voted by all our Delegates at WEX Global 2016. Attendees at WEX Global will vote this new
award during the days of the 29th of February and 1st of March. From the result of these votes, we will get the winner of the “Best WEX Awards 2016
Project chosen by the Delegates”.
WIPAC and WEX Global have also recently announced a media partnership at WEX Global conference this year with preferential rates available for members of
the group. Group Manager, Oliver Grievson will also be a judge at the WEX Global Awards
Page 4
Industry News
Institute of Water announces Eastern Section Dragon’s Den event
WEX Global announces launch of Innovation Awards and WIPAC
joins WEX as media partner

Industry urged to invest in new
autonomous water distribution
systems
Vega mobile training centre
to tour UK in 2016
Speaking at the recent North American Water Loss Conference in Georgia,
Craig Stanners, Director of IVL Flow Control (part of the Ham Baker Group)
urged the water industry to address leakage, catastrophic main failures and
contamination by investing in the next generation of advanced hydraulic
networks.
Stanners, said that Network Management and Hydraulic Modelling as well as
Air Valve Design and Surge Modelling will calm networks, secure supply and
prevent unnecessary surges and water hammer. Pressures required for
fire-fighting are also far better managed by advanced hydraulics, resulting in far
less strain on the network, he claimed.
“Water quality monitoring equipment has now been developed to utilise the
benefits of a truly autonomous water distribution system”, said Stanners, “so
to protect customers from poor quality, health-damaging water or biological
contamination from terrorists, water providers have every incentive to act”.
He added: “The technology is here to intelligently isolate or restrict issues
before an entire network is affected. A major cryptosporidium parasite
incident in the UK this year that affected 300,000 homes has so far cost one
water supplier nearly $160 million (£110 million), not to mention the severe
tarnishing of their reputation. Full Network Autonomous Control would have
gone a long way to preventing or reducing this seriously prolonged nightmare
for customers”.
During his presentation, Stanners from IVL Flow Control also put forward a
case that every valve installation should be designed to account for a minimum
pressure at two critical target points (nodes) within the network. Unlike
traditional valve systems which can only look one way, the benefit of two critical
target points ensures that a check is made to see if water is available upstream
as well as downstream.
He also stressed the key advantages of using valves that operate from zero
flow, which means that they do not become unstable when pressure drops to a
bare minimum. Stanners said that new designs of air valves that can deal with
transient issues, such as rapid pressure surges, are also now available.
Vega, a leading supplier of level and pressure instrumentation for all
industries have announced that their mobile demonstration & training
centre will be touring the UK from 2nd
February to 4th
March 2016.
The training centre will be starting in Aberdeen on 2nd February and
finishing in Burgess Hill in West Sussex on 4th March. The full schedule
of locations where anyone for all industries can visit is.
Venue Location Date in 2016
Aberdeen 2nd & 3rd Feb
Grangemouth 4th Feb
Liverpool 16th Feb
Hull 18th Feb
Grimsby 19th Feb
Derby 22nd Feb
Coventry 23rd Feb
Peterborough 24th Feb
Burgess Hill 4th March
Depending upon the location and the industry that the mobile training
centre is visiting a range of training courses will be available for those
visiting including the techniques surrounding radar level measurement,
vibrating level switches and pressure measurement as well as nucleonic
measurement devices.
For further details of each of the events and to book your place
on one of Vega’s open days then please contact Doug Anderson at
doug.anderson@vega.com

AWWA Announces New Manual On Power Actuators
M66 Cylinder and Vane Actuators and Controls - Design and Installation now available in AWWA’s online store
The American Water Works Association has released its newest manual – M66 Cylinder and Vane Actuators and Controls – Design and Installation.
M66 provides valuable information on the design and installation of hydraulic and pneumatic power actuators. Power actuators are a fundamental part of
water and wastewater systems and are rising in popularity given the increased use of automatic process systems.
Intended to be a resource for operators, engineers and utility supervisors during the startup process and troubleshooting in the field, M66 details how various
power actuators are constructed and operated given specific parameters.
M66 also delves into how to install, control and maintain power actuators and how to select the best style for application. This manual compliments AWWA
Standards C541 Hydraulic and Pneumatic Cylinder and Vane-Type Actuators for Valves and Slide Gates and C542 Electric Motor Actuators for Valves and Slide
Gates.
Page 6
City Of Oakland, Adopts InfoMaster Analytics-Driven, Risk-Based
Asset Management Solution
Innovyze, has recently announced that the City of Oakland, California, has chosen industry-leading Innovyze InfoMaster software to help optimize its sanitary
sewer infiltration and inflow (I/I) reduction program.
Oakland is the third largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, the eighth largest in California, and the 45th-largest in the U.S. with a population of 413,775.
Its underground contains over 930 miles of sanitary sewer pipes, the approximate distance from its City Hall to Denver, Colorado. The sanitary sewer system
includes 31,000 structures and seven pump/lift stations. The City is responsible for the public sanitary sewer main pipes that carry waste to the treatment plant,
while the East Bay Municipal Utility District is responsible for sanitary sewer treatment and disposal.
“InfoMaster gives us the critical powers of risk-based asset integrity and mathematical modelling while fully leveraging our existing geospatial asset
management solutions and hydraulics and CCTV data,” said Jimmy Mach, P.E., Supervising Civil Engineer for Oakland. “These powerful capabilities will
enable us to accurately assess the condition and performance of our sanitary sewer system, effectively solve our I/I problems, prioritize and optimize our capital
planning expenditures based on rigorous analytics, and meet regulatory requirements.”
Globally, aging wastewater infrastructures are rapidly deteriorating and sometimes failing — with potentially dire human, environmental and financial
consequences. As this aging process continues, the need for effective risk-based asset integrity management becomes more pressing. Maintaining
infrastructure assets in fit-for-purpose condition throughout their target lifespans is a primary goal for utilities worldwide, and selecting the right pipes for
rehabilitation at the right time is one of the main challenges of asset management. An understanding of when and how pipes will fail, combined with a
quantitative grasp of the underlying causal factors likely to induce failure, are essential in formulating a targeted approach to rehabilitation, repair and renewal
planning.
Certified by NASSCO PACP, MACP and LACP V6.0, InfoMaster is the leading software choice for utilities faced with optimizing their sewer infrastructures and
eliminating unwanted overflows. It can accurately estimate both the likelihood and consequence of failure for each individual sewer main in the network,
as well as the amount and time of occurrence of future failures. This critical information facilitates a proactive approach to identifying and managing these
high-risk assets to help preserve structural integrity and keep the network operating well into the future. It also eliminates reactive maintenance: waiting for
pipe failures to occur before repairing.
InfoMaster comprehensive risk-based asset integrity modelling techniques provide reliable pipe failure predictions, even for limited failure records and
application to different pipe materials. They include the non-homogeneous Markov Chain (NHMC), non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP), Linear
Extended Yule Process (LEYP), Cox proportional hazards model, and advanced time-based probabilistic Weibull and Herz models. These techniques can be
effectively used to evaluate a variety of pipe characteristics related to failure, and can consider all pipes in the network, not just those with breaks or
other failures. Armed with these powerful models, utilities can now accurately assess the aging processes of their network pipes and estimate their lifetimes
and structural/functional failure potential and distribution over time. Such capabilities can greatly assist utilities in assessing their pipes’ propensity to fail,
identifying critical ones (more prone to failure), prioritizing their inspection and determining rehabilitation requirements. This proactive “fix before break”
approach can help utilities extend the useful life of their assets and improve their performance at maximum savings.
The InfoMaster product suite automatically imports InfoSWMM hydraulic network models and facilitates significantly better planning and control by giving
utilities critical insight into all enterprise assets, their conditions, aging and work processes. It also features direct integration with Cityworks (Azteca Systems
Inc., Sandy, UT), Cartegraph (Dubuque, IA), infraMAP (iWater, Irvine, CA) and Lucity (Overland Park, KS), and can interface with other leading maintenance
management software (CMMS). InfoMaster enables utilities to use information and analytics in new ways to drive higher productivity and quality while
managing costs and increasing operational flexibility.
The program’s intuitive interface; easy-to-use functionality; and rich analytical, graphing, and reporting capabilities save utilities considerable resources. With
minimal effort, users can quickly pinpoint assets at the greatest risk of hydraulic and water quality deficiencies or structural failure, identify the best possible
improvement alternatives for optimal system performance, prioritize improvements based on available budget, and realize significant cost savings.
“Strong asset performance modelling and capital planning capabilities are critical components of a smart enterprise asset management strategy,” said Paul
F. Boulos, COO and Chief Technical Officer of Innovyze. “InfoMaster delivers detailed, accurate analyses and comprehensive custom reports that help utility
managers make better, more informed decisions on when to repair, replace, or rehabilitate their critical sewer network assets, eliminate potential overflows
and optimize efficiency, maintenance and hydraulic performance. It also supports them in developing reliable long-term funding strategies for such projects.
These advantages help utilities ensure the long-term sustainability of their infrastructures and their ongoing ability to deliver the required level of service at
the lowest lifecycle cost. As a key component of this complex synthesis, Innovyze is proud to be a part of Oakland’s success.”

Environment Agency highlights state of the art flood technologies
The Environment Agency has revealed its armoury of unusual equipment used to tackle flooding including lasers, solar-powered cameras, a gadget-laden
incident vehicle and its latest ‘weapon’ - a remote-controlled robot called Mr Nosey.
Mr Nosey is a new invention being used to investigate causes of flooding that people can’t reach, such as blocked tunnels and underground culverts. Fitting into
spaces as small as 6 inches in diameter, he uses the camera on his nose to inspect underground tunnels more than a mile long.
There are more than one million miles of culverts in England that can cause flooding to homes and businesses when blocked. Items which have been found
down culverts include old lawnmowers, children’s toys and Christmas trees.
The robot, which weighs 30kg to prevent it from being swept away in fast-flowing water, travels through underground tunnels while sending real-time images
to the surface so that Environment Agency staff can assess the damage or blockages below.
John Curtin, the Environment Agency’s Executive Director of Flood Risk Management, said:
Almost 5 million people in England live in areas at risk of flooding and innovations ranging from little gadgets like Mr Nosey to our new state of the art incident
vehicles are hugely important. They are the little brothers to our larger scale flood defences, such as the iconic Thames Barrier, but all of them help us to reduce
that risk. As winter approaches, we also encourage people to prepare for potential flooding by checking the flood risk in their area and signing up to free flood
warnings.
Environment Minister Rory Stewart said the Agency is making the most of new technology to help people prepare for potential floods from ultra-sonic scans of
riverbeds on remote controlled boats to robots scouring culverts.
Other technologies and equipment used by the Environment Agency to tackle flooding include:
Lasers
The Environment Agency’s aerial survey team use lasers to map and scan the English landscape
from above. This data is used for flood modelling and to track changing coastal habitats. The
aerial survey team typically capture LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data in the winter
months when leaf cover from trees is at a minimum, to ensure height data is as accurate as
possible. The images can be captured day or night.
Incident Command Vehicles
The incident command vehicles are one of the first on the scene when flooding is about to strike and use satellite communications to send live footage back to
Environment Agency HQ. The vehicles are kitted out with the latest technology to provide emergency response teams with up-to-the-minute briefings and the
on-board generator means they can operate from the most remote locations.
Amphibious Weed Cutting Boat and the Robomower
The Environment Agency’s Amphibious Weed Cutting Boat trawls land and water, clearing overgrown
weeds with a giant chainsaw to maintain the flow of rivers and prevent blockages that cause flooding.
The Robomower is a remote controlled grass cutter used for the same purpose on steep grass flood
banks to keep grass and bushes to a minimum.
ARC Boat
ARC (Acoustic Remote Controlled) boats use ultrasound to collect information about how much
water is flowing in rivers. This data is used to monitor river levels and predict when flooding may
occur. The boats can be used on areas of a river that it would be too dangerous to get to otherwise,
such as under bridges or in fast-flowing currents.
Solar powered cameras
The Environment Agency has recently installed solar powered cameras at locations around the country to monitor water levels in crucial areas. The cameras are
linked to Twitter and when residents have signed up to the service, they will receive alerts and photos via twitter when water levels rise significantly.
The Agency has also flagged up the Thames Barrier – one of the largest movable flood barriers in the world – as a more traditional type of flood defence.
Spanning 520 metres across the River Thames near Woolwich, the barrier protects around £200 billion of assets within London including 500,000 properties,
London’s financial and business centre and 1.25 million people living and working within London.
It has 10 steel gates that can be raised into a position of defence across the River Thames. When raised, the main gates stand as high as a 5-storey building and
as wide as the opening of Tower Bridge. Each main gate weighs 3,300 tonnes. The barrier is closed under storm surge conditions to protect London from flooding
from the sea.
Page 7

Cranfield awarded £8.2M investment for water research
The government has announced investment of £8.2M to support advances in water treatment and infrastructure research through Cranfield University’s Water
Science Institute in the Autumn Statement and Comprehensive Spending Review.
The investment comes through the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure & Cities (UKCRIC) which involves 14 UK universities engaged in
cutting-edge national infrastructure research.
The investment at Cranfield will enhance the University’s existing industrial-scale test facilities, providing extended access to on-site wastewater, water, and
stormwater treatment and conveyance systems. Several new facilities including a pilot hall and infrastructure monitoring & control suite will complete the
investment portfolio.
Professor Sir Peter Gregson, Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University said: “We are delighted to have been successful in securing this funding. Cranfield has
an international reputation for pioneering research and education in water and sanitation. This investment in the infrastructure will enhance the existing
industrial-scale facilities for which Cranfield University is renowned.”
Professor Paul Jeffrey, Professor of Water Management at Cranfield, said: “The new facilities at Cranfield will enhance our research into the future of our
most fundamental utility. Our expertise in water science is already well-established and these facilities will allow us to advance our understanding of water
infrastructure further.”
Research at the enhanced facility will focus on treatment and distribution processes; future technologies like low energy treatment and nutrient and energy
recovery; condition monitoring and performance assessment including development of repair techniques which are less disruptive to supply; system-wide
operation and control and integrated data systems.
The investment forms a part of a wider UKCRIC package of £138 million from the government with 100% matched funding from other sources. Outside national
security and medicine, this will be one of the largest collaborative research projects in the UK. UKCRIC will work to provide a knowledge base to ensure the
long-term functioning of the UK’s transport systems, energy systems, clean water supplies, waste management, flood defences and the development of SMART
infrastructures.
Professor Brian Collins, chairman of the UKCRIC Coordination Node from University College London, said: “UKCRIC is more than just another research project.
This is the first step to creating long-term partnerships between the people who build our infrastructure, the people who regulate and fund it, the people who
own and operate it and those of us who study how it works and is used.”
ECS Renews Sluice Automation Equipment For EA
As the Environment Agency (EA) continues its programme to upgrade water control structures on the
River Lee, it has contracted ECS Engineering Services to replace the actuators and gearboxes on the
sluice gates at Rammey Marsh. The project also delivered improved automation and reliability which
reduced maintenance costs.
Located in Waltham Abbey, Essex, the Rammey Marsh sluice gates form part of the extensive flood
prevention equipment on and around the River Lee. Originally built as part of a flood alleviation
scheme, the three sluice gates form part of a network of sluices and weirs designed to maintain
the water level in the flood relief channel and associated lakes, but also allow flood water to be
discharged towards the Thames when necessary.
Originally built in the 1950s, the drive systems for the sluice gates, each of which had reached the end
of its serviceable life and the EA set in place a project not only to replace them but also to improve
the automated control system at the same time. The motors, gearboxes, brake assemblies and hand
wheels all needed to be replaced with the new components connecting to the existing main shaft which held the wire ropes used to raise and lower the sluice
doors.
ECS designed the new drive system to incorporate Rotork IQ35 actuators that were connected to 90°gearboxes. The new actuators have an IP68 rating to ensure
optimum performance in this application and they are also fitted with additional 4-20 mA relay outputs that provide a signal for the current position of the sluice
gate. This information can be transmitted back to the central control point to provide vital data on the status of the sluice structure.
The renovation project involved design and fabrication work to position the new drive mechanisms in exactly the right place for the connection to the main drive
shaft above each sluice gate. In addition ECS created some additional access platforms and hand railing to ensure that EA engineers can safely operate the hand
wheels without the need for temporary access equipment.
The original motor control centre (MCC) was retained but the ECS electrical engineers modified the control wiring of each sluice gate to accommodate the new
position signals and the more modern actuator controls. As each drive system was completed it was tested and commissioned before work started on the next
sluice gate. In this way the EA maintained operational control of two sluice gates at all times, which is sufficient for the day to day operation of the site.
Jamie Wesley, Commercial Manager, Water Control Division, explains: “This contract forms part of our on-going commitment to delivering projects for the EA
across the UK. As a framework contractor for the EA, ECS is trusted to deliver the skills and expertise required to design, fabricate and install entire projects safely
and on time. This project required a wide range of skills including fabrication, electrical control engineering and mechanical design work, all areas in which ECS
has considerable experience.”
Page 8

GE Introduces InSight Analytics
Sensus To Expand Operations In Covington, Louisiana
GE recently launched InSight* Analytics, the next evolution of its InSight Industrial Internet
solution that connects people and data to provide a total system performance view of water
treatment operations. InSight Analytics can help achieve greater system efficiency, reduce
operating costs and optimize production by providing near real-time performance calculations and
clear, reliable reporting. Using the predictive analytics capability of the original InSight platform, GE
InSight Analytics collects performance data to enable operators to resolve critical issues, prevent
problems before they occur, optimize operations and make strategic decisions.
The first GE analytics available are for reverse osmosis (RO) membranes and condenser
efficiency in heat transfer systems. InSight Analytics for RO will help operators get the most out
of their membranes through better management of their membrane cleaning schedules, an
important step in preventing deposits from forming on membranes, which reduce membrane efficiency and waste valuable energy. The other offering,
InSight Analytics for condenser efficiency, brings a new level of reliability and transparency to measuring condenser efficiency in heat transfer systems, offering
real-time data normalization, even during peak production times, in a clear, simplified report.
The Historic City of Covington, already the engineering center for Sensus communications and metering solutions, will soon also be a manufacturing
location for critical smart city infrastructure. Sensus is expanding its footprint in St. Tammany Parish to provide its utility partners with the most robust, reliable,
storm-hardened, two-way communication solution. The new Sensus facility will design and manufacture a wide range of utility solutions including the recently
released M400 FlexNet® Base Station.
In order to improve lead times and drive six sigma quality initiatives Sensus decided to bring M400 manufacturing in-house. Additional design engineers and
operations and production staff will be hired. The Sensus manufacturing facility is expected to open in early 2016. The 6,000 square foot space is large enough
to meet future expansion needs
“Wirelessly and securely transporting critical data for electric, water and gas utilities provides the basis for smart infrastructure,” said Sensus President Randy
Bays. “We have extended these capabilities to all types of sensors such as distribution automation, lighting controls and IoT devices. The speed, latency and
operational effectiveness of two-way communication are critical to successfully implementing a reliable network infrastructure.”
The locally produced M400 offers utilities a better design, smaller size and more computing capabilities. It supports multiple applications and helps utilities save
significant operating cost by utilizing the point-to-multipoint technology to isolate and restore outages faster than other network systems.
Louisiana is the birthplace of FlexNet, which became part of the Sensus technology portfolio in 2006. The long-range radio network provides a scalable two-way
communications infrastructure. Working with smart meters and sensors, the FlexNet system securely transmits and receives data that improves the efficiency
of utility operations.
Southern Water completes installation of 450,000 meters
Southern Water’s five-year programme to install nearly 450,000 meters across Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight ended this month.
The unique programme - Southern Water was the first UK water company to introduce widescale metering - was launched in 2010. It is estimated that the
programme has led to a saving of 27 million litres of water a day – enough to meet the daily water needs of cities and towns the size of Winchester and Andover
combined. Most households (62%) have seen a reduction in bills, with an average reduction of £162 a year.
Homes in Southampton alone are saving, on average, 5.3 million litres of water a day, enough to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.
A four-year study at Southampton University has corroborated the savings, helping to transform the scepticism which accompanied the launch of the controver-
sial programme into a fanfare of praise, now that it nears completion.
Trevor Bishop, Deputy Director of Water Resources at the Environment Agency, described Southern Water as “bold and progressive” for taking the lead on
metering.
And MP Richard Benyon, who was the Water Minister when the programme commenced in 2010, spoke recently about the leadership and pioneering spirit of
Southern Water, concluding: “I pay great tribute to Southern Water for the Universal Metering Programme.”
Richard Price, Southern Water’s Director of Engineering and Construction, said: “This is very much a triumph for our customers, many of whom have changed
the way they use water to make huge savings.
“This might be something as simple as turning off the tap when brushing your teeth, using a water butt instead of a hosepipe or not switching on the dishwasher
until it has a full load. Adopting these and many other water efficiency measures today will help us to ensure that there will be water available when we turn
the tap on in the future.
“Indeed, our customers have worked hard to reduce their consumption by 16.5%, against a national average of 10% when having a water meter installed,” said
Richard. With nearly 90% of all households now metered, our customers must be amongst the most water efficient in the country.”
Page 9

Opinion:
Water And The Internet Of Things:
2016
Forecasters predict that California could receive record amounts of rain during this winter because of El Nino. Smart water management is important in times
of no rain or too much rain so our conservation efforts must continue. The Internet of Things (“IoT”) can help the water supply from the El Nino rains be used
more efficiently and with less waste.
I became interested in water and the IoT over a year ago when I had a below surface water leak at home that resulted in a large water bill.[1] Since I live in
the Silicon Valley, California, the high tech capital of the world, I thought there should be a better way to track water usage so problems can be identified and
solved sooner. I needed a smart water meter, an IoT application, that I could read online, at least on a daily basis, to monitor usage and provide actionable
information. Motivating water conservation is more effective when users have a clear and timely picture of how water is used.
What is the Internet of Things?
Smart water meters are a form of IoT, a network of technologies which can monitor the status of physical objects, capture meaningful data, and communicate
that data over a wireless network to a software application for analysis on a computer in the cloud. Technologies are capable of monitoring objects such as
smart water meters and other electronic devices, organisms or a natural part of the environment such as an area of ground to be measured for moisture or
chemical content. A smart device is associated with each object which provides the connectivity and a unique digital identity for identifying, tracking and
communicating with the object. A sensor within or attached to the device is connected to the Internet by a local area connection (such as RFID, NFC or BTLE)
and can also have wide area connectivity. Typically, each data transmission from a device is small in size but the number of transmissions can be frequent.
Each sensor will monitor a specific condition or set of conditions such as vibration, motion, temperature, pressure or water quality. More applications have
become feasible because the cost and size of such devices continues to decrease and their sophistication for measuring conditions keeps increasing. Cisco
estimates that 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. [2]
For example, at home I would need a smart water meter (device) that collects usage data which is communicated wirelessly to the water utility company
where software analyses the data and reports the results on the web site for me to view. In the San Francisco pilot program described below, a customer
can view the data as it comes in, as well as compare their numbers with past use and city averages. The usage data should eventually alert me to a leak or
another device that measures water pressure could detect a leak faster. To find the location for repair, however, I would need to add sensors to measure
pressure at various locations in my water system. The sensors would be connected to data analytics software in the cloud that would analyse the data
transmitted to identify the location of the leak between two sensing points in my water system. This is a much more complex application than simply tracking
water usage and illustrates the importance of the software data analysis applications needed in order to make sense of the transmitted data.
Smart Water Meters Status
One of the largest pilot programs of smart meters and related water management software platforms (a smart water management network) is in San
Francisco. Water consumption is measured hourly and data is transmitted on a wireless basis to the utility four times a day. Both the utility and customers
can track use. A pilot program in the East Bay Municipal Water District, which targets mostly single-family homes, provides a daily update of hour-by-hour
consumption via a website. Consumers can be alerted, for example, by email or phone call, when water use exceeds a specified limit or when a meter
indicates continuous running water for 24 hours.[3]
At the end of 2014, about 10 percent of California customers were equipped with smart water meters. That number is currently about 15 percent. While
more cities and water districts in California have begun, or are planning, pilot programs, smart water meter implementation remains slow in California and
elsewhere around the U.S. Smart water meters in the U.S. account for less than 20 percent of the approximately 100 million water meters nationwide,
according to the smart-utilities research firm IHS Inc.
Budget limitations are the largest obstacle to faster adoption of smart water meters. Smart water meters are more expensive and less ruggedized than
traditional mechanical meters. A complete smart meter management network can also be expensive and some utilities do not have the capability to
effectively deploy and manage such technology. Some vendors are offering a managed services business model to utility companies for this purpose.
There are more meter and platform products available in the market but there does not appear to be any market leader yet. The products vary from the very
basic to those that integrate water metering networks with leak detection and usage monitoring applications.
Can the IoT Help Solve the California Water Problem?
I believe that even the simplest form of smart water meter installed at homes and businesses on a wide spread basis can provide actionable
information, which if applied with common sense, can help save millions of gallons of water. [4] If the water utilities can provide the smart meter and basic
water management platform, private vendors can offer more sophisticated features that are accessible as an app on a mobile phone similar to how AT&T
provides the Digital Life home security system. Private vendors are already offering advanced features such as water leak detection.
The universe of water IoT networks can be divided into infrastructure, governmental, business and consumer. The water infrastructure IoT will help improve
a utility’s water quality, supply, treatment, transportation and storage facilities such as reservoirs. Water savings will be the greatest and action should be the
fastest at the infrastructure level. A utility should be able to justify the expenditure on the water savings particularly on the basis of planning for scarcity. State
and local governments can save money and also have a major impact on supply by implementing the IoT for buildings and other uses like landscape irrigation.
An IoT water management network for a large building or office park can help water be used more efficiently. Water cost savings and forced
Page 10

conservation will help drive adoption by businesses (including California’s important agricultural industry) and consumers, but they will be looking for a clear
return on investment.
A utility can use an IoT network to remotely determine the status and working condition of equipment (open or closed, on or off, full or empty, etc.). The
information can be actionable. A gate can be opened or closed or a pump turned on or off remotely to adjust the flow of water through a water
transportation system. Pumps, gates and other equipment with moving parts in the water infrastructure can be monitored for vibration and other indications
of failure. If a water pump is about to fail, the utility can be prompted to repair or replace it. An IoT-enabled water treatment plant can report if its filters are
clean and functioning properly. The IoT can measure water pressure in pipes to find leaks faster in the water transportation system or the presence of certain
chemicals in the water supply.
Agriculture consumes about 40 percent of the freshwater available in California with a large amount being wasted by leaky irrigation systems, inefficient field
application methods and the planting of water intensive crops in the wrong growing location. The IoT has great potential to make water use smarter for the
agricultural industry, particularly in irrigation efficiency.
Another focus for water savings should be landscape irrigation in parks, medians and elsewhere. This is a major use of water in cities. Nationwide, it is
estimated to be nearly one-third of all residential water use and as much as half of this water is wasted due to runoff, evaporation or wind. [5] Landscape
irrigation systems, which apply sophisticated data analytics to a wide variety of objects, are available in the market. [6] Current weather data is combined with
sensors for moisture, heat and other data such as the slope of the land, type of soil and the relative exposure to sunshine at a particular time.
Legal Issues
The way that IoT physical components are combined into a network and the related data analytics software can have significant business value. Intellectual
property (IP) protection is important. IoT system designers need to think both offensively and defensively in creating an IP strategy so they have the freedom to
operate without a license from a third party and also provide a barrier to entry by a competitor. There are already more than 300 patents issued in which the
term “Internet of Things” appears when the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) data base is searched.
Ownership rights to data have emerged as an important issue as IoT business models have evolved. The revenue stream potential of such data may be greater
than from selling or licensing the software and hardware components of such networks.
IoT networks need to be designed and implemented with adequate security and privacy protection. The threat to security and privacy may not be recognized to
be as significant as in other types of networks since IoT devices have limited functionality and connectivity. [7] But there are more points of possible intrusion
and vulnerability in an IoT network. A network failure or hacker attack could have serious consequences, particularly in the water infrastructure. For example, a
hacker could target sensors at a water treatment facility to cause false readings on whether water is potable. Most water infrastructure IoT networks will have
only security concerns but there will also be some privacy issues. Consumer IoT networks will need to protect both privacy and security. Hacking into a smart
water meter, for example, could reveal whether or not a family is at home.
As the implementation of smart meter and other IoT networks grows, the data produced can provide actionable information for regulatory authorities for
determining compliance by residential, agricultural and other business water users as well as by parties in the water infrastructure. The data can be the basis
for enforcement actions so it must be reliable.
There will be liability issues if the IoT network fails or makes a wrong determination. Liability insurance will be needed by the IoT components and systems
vendors that provide the network. Limiting liability by contract with a utility, state or local government or business may be feasible in the same way as for other
equipment and software but contracts will not be possible in many consumer applications.
Summary
The simplest implementation of smart water meters for residential customers would help conserve millions of gallons of water. The IoT can be used to
determine when and how much water is needed in landscape and agricultural irrigation in times of El Nino as well as draught. Although the IoT cannot make
it rain or snow or fix leaky water pipes, it can reduce water shortages by providing actionable information to help usage be more efficient and less wasteful.
References
[1] See Water and the Internet of Things, October 28, 2014, rroyselaw.com/water-and-the-inter-of-things
[2] www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/iot/overview.html
[3] Water Meters Begin to Get Smarter, www.wsj.com/articles/water-meters-begin-to-get-smarter-1430881505
[4] 7 Ways Smart Meters Save Water, www.wateronline.com/doc/ways-smart-meters-save-water-0001
[5] www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/outdoor.html
[6] www.govtech.com/fs/perspectives/3-Ways-the-Internet-of-Things-Can-Address-the-Water-Crisis.html
[7] A hacking incident involving connected cars has been mentioned as a warning on the vulnerability of the IoT. www.forbes.com/sites/dougnew-
comb/2015/08/10/putting-the-recent-wave-of-car-hack-hysteria-in-perspective/
This article was first published on Water Online and is written by Fred Greguras, Attorney, Royse Law
Page 11

Article:
WITS-DNP 3 Protocol adoption
progresses
All UK water companies use telemetry and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) to monitor and control their remote assets. Traditionally, telemetry
consists of a field device which is linked to a master station using a variety of telemetry protocols and communication methods. This provides data and infor-
mation for the purpose of monitoring and controlling the process and the associated plant.
The development of a Water Industry Telemetry Standard (WITS) Protocol for communications between components of a SCADA system – i.e. a WITS master
station and its remotely connected WITS field devices – was first considered by a working group from the UK water industry and major suppliers in 2003. To-
gether, they developed a WITS distributed network protocol (DNP) based on the internationally recognised DNP3 Standard in use across the world. However,
the WITS-DNP3 Protocol Standard is still in the process of adoption in the UK.
During AMP6, water companies are placing more reliance on telemetry to provide the data they require to improve both their operational efficiency and their
customer service. So there is an increasing need to have common standards for telemetry so that the required data can be collected in the most efficient man-
ner.
The WITS-DNP3 Protocol Standard would be of enormous benefit to both water companies and suppliers. Water companies would benefit from increased
product choice, reduced cost, simpler configuration and improved data quality. Suppliers would benefit from greater market opportunities and the potential to
reduce development and support costs.
Availability
WITS-compliant field devices are currently available from Xylem, Schneider
Electric, Halma Water Management, Metasphere, Servelec, Technolog, ABB
and Brodersen. The range of devices does not only include telemetry out-
stations and loggers, but also specialised devices such as pumping station
managers, CSO monitors, and flow meters. This is realising the original vision
in so much that the Protocol would be adopted across a range of field devices
to enable them to connect directly to the associated master station without
the need for a separate outstation. Two companies, Servelec and Schneider
Electric, have master stations that comply with the Standard.
Product certification
Vendors may choose one of two levels of certification for their products:
Self-certification: Tests are conducted by the vendor using their own test
equipment and do not involve any third party.
Verification: Tests are carried out against existing WITS-verified devices in
conjunction with the vendors of those devices. This ensures a greater level
of confidence that the equipment complies with the Protocol and
delivers interoperability.
User adoption
Within the UK water industry, the WITS Standard has been adopted by many
of the major water companies as shown on the map, and around 5,000 WITS
based
devices have now been installed. Other companies are assessing its possible
use as their Standard, including the recently formed Irish Water for use across
Ireland.
In addition, water companies around the country have a major task ahead in
order to be compliant with the private pumping station requirements which
come into effect in October 2016. With this in mind, Xylem has been working
with a major UK water company to trial its alarm telemetry unit (ATU) product
range.
The WITS-verified Flygt ATU series is broadly a range of general controllers
and remote terminal units featuring PLC functionality across a variety of ap-
plications. The ATU series operates with a variety of power options for remote
monitoring and control of assets including mains, DC and internal battery
powered. The battery-powered unit is capable of running on a single set of
Page 12

standard D cell batteries with a life expectancy of around five years – ideal for remote locations where access may be limited. Furthermore, thanks to the close
working collaboration with its clients, Xylem has been able to modify products to meet with many additional requirements – tailoring the offering, specific to
the water company’s needs.
The process of connecting a WITS verified device to the top-end system was in this case an easy process, as shown in the following steps:
1. Before arrival on site, the ATU is preconfigured with a bulk file, suitable for the required communication standard.
2. The device profile is then read from the ATU using Xylem’s OPT Win software and loaded into the master station.
3. The ATU and master station (MS) are configured – ensuring interoperability between standards and equipment.
4. The ATU is then configured with the GPRS SIM details, and the IP address and the transmission control port (TCP) of the MS server are entered into the ATU.
5. From here, the ATU will then connect to the MS which can read the bulk and incremental files along with the other WITS components.
6. Once this is complete, the WITS functionality such as alarms and logs can be set up via the MS using OPT Win. It is also possible after this stage to apply
further specific or proprietary local alarms, if required.
WITS-compliant devices also include the Flygt Multismart – an advanced solution capable of controlling up to six pumps. One major water company has over
2,000 units operating over the WITS Protocol today.
Developments
The WITS Protocol Standards Association was established to ensure the protocol continues to meet the requirements of the water industry. It is dedicated to the
collaborative development, maintenance and promotion of the WITS Protocol. This is guided by a long-term strategy that encourages vendors to bring WITS-
based devices to market, maintains aligned to users’ needs, including the requirements associated with data security aligned to the Centre for the Protection of
National Infrastructure (CPNI)’s best practice guidelines.
International adoption
Further afield, the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) is developing a set of guidelines for the deployment of SCADA on the country’s water utility
assets. The purpose of the project is to establish some form of consistency within Australia and to give those wishing to better manage their water assets by
implementing SCADA on their water services some guidelines as to what are minimum, good, and best practices. It will cover the whole lifecycle of SCADA from
planning, design, procurement, deployment and maintenance through to disposal.
It is recognised that the communications protocol used in a SCADA system is a fundamental requirement for interoperability, flexibility and efficient data
gathering and control of the assets. The communications protocol recommended by the WSAA guidelines is DNP3. Although originally designed for the
power utility sector, this protocol has become the de facto standard for many water utilities and is used widely throughout the UK, USA and Australia. The WITS
standard, building on the DNP3 standard, provides water utilities with many water utility-specific enhancements that are not addressed by protocols from other
Case Study: Northern Ireland Water
“At Northern Ireland Water (NIW), telemetry provides monitoring of approximately
4,500 clean and wastewater assets. There is a reliance on accurate and timely data being
provided for business, operational purposes and for the security of customer water and
wastewater facilities. At each asset, signals are marshalled into a local telemetry outstation
e.g. pump status, valve status, levels, flows etc. The outstation communicates these signals
via radio, GSM or PSTN to the central Regional Telemetry System.
Some of the existing outstations at these assets are more than 10 years old and have
come to the end of their operational life. NIW has committed to contracts and a project to
replace 900 outstations over the next two years utilising Schneider Electric’s WITS-DNP3
Talus T4e outstation. EMR are installing, configuring and commissioning the outstations in
liaison with the NIW project team in Belfast.
The project is proceeding to plan and thus far has successfully installed over 150
outstations. The outstations are sharing radio channels with existing legacy outstations,
operating in a polled mode whereby the master station requests data from the outstations
on a regular basis. NIW’s scanning radio network utilises 4RF’s Aprisa SR radios, allowing
dual protocol and dual baud rate on the same physical channel. The existing Serck Proteus protocol outstations send data at 2,400 baud whereas the new WITS
outstations are polled at 9,600 baud.
Delivery of the new outstations shall maintain a robust telemetry infrastructure both for now and the future. It will ensure that NI Water is employing best
practice using the WITS-DNP3 for telemetry outstations and also deliver a standard telemetry configuration for NI Water’s assets. It will align and support
NIW’s instrumentation, control, automation, and telemetry strategies as well as its future organisation model.
Northern Ireland Water is installing 900 WITS-DNP3-compliant Talus T4e
outstations from Schneider Electric over the next two years
Charles Williams has over 25 years experience in telemetry, SCADA, instrumentation, control and automation across a range of sectors, Charles is one of
Grontmij’s leading asset management specialists within water. His knowledge and expertise extends from the creation of asset management strategies
to fulfil business requirements, right through to the development and implementation of associated processes and technologies.
Charles has worked with all the major water companies within the UK, leading on both the development and management of many of the largest real
time systems projects to deliver the necessary infrastructure to provide the correct data and information to manage asset bases, and ultimately provide
an enhanced customer service.
Page 13

Introduction
The Water Industry in the UK faces a turning point in the use of instrumentation with the advent of TOTEX within the current Asset Management Period, the
sixth since it privatised in 1989. The industry now has concepts such as “Big Data,” the Internet of Things (and its big brother, the Industrial Version), “Smart
Systems” and of course “Small Information.” Instrumentation is a crucial factor in all of these concepts and the power that lies in them is to find out what is
actually happening on a day to day basis in the various systems that the industry operates.
The problem that the industry faces though is that at times instrumentation has been an after-thought and
has been installed as one of the last things in a scheme as an “add on” without thinking of the purpose of that
instrumentation, what is there to do. This has resulted in a “resistance to the effective use of information” and
the collection of hundreds of millions of pieces of information a day with no real purpose, the so called DRIP
phenomenon, Data Richness Information Poverty.
The problem was that instrumentation, although it had been around for many years, was something that
people with the industry knew that they needed but didn’t really know what they wanted to do with it. The
SWAN Network layers diagram (figure 1) neatly highlighted instrumentation’s place within the Water Industry
.
The fact that Instrumentation is part of a Smart Water Network is a moot point for the wider industry it is the
systematic approach that is important.
The fact that instrumentation in the UK has typically been installed as part of a large capital scheme and
typically as an add on is a problem for the current industry as the number of these capital schemes decline. As
such a new types of schemes, to adopt instrumentation & control systems may well be required. In order to do
this an examination of how we install instrumentation, from concept to replacement is needed. The rest of this
article will touch on some of the concepts that need to be looked at.
The Lifecycle of instrumentation
The Water Industry when it has traditionally installed
instrumentation has taken a CAPEX/OPEX approach.
Instrumentation has typically been installed as part of
a capital scheme to install a new treatment works or
more commonly a process within a treatment works
and instrumentation has been installed to monitor and
control the various elements, mostly (although not
always) with some sort of SCADA based system
(depending upon the size of the works). The
instrumentation has been proved in a commissioning
programme and then handed over to operations. The
instrumentation then gets replaced as it breaks in the
subsequent years (figure 2)
What tended to be missing from this approach was
that there was no definition in what an instrument was
being used for except simple monitoring and control
because the Capital Scheme was focused on
delivering one particular element of a system and was
not funded to look at the system as a whole and how
that system works. What has highlighted the problems
with this approach is the Advanced Process Control schemes where instrumentation has been used effectively delivered in conjunction with engineering
partners and supply chain companies. Where this approach has been taken the model has been repeated and repeated again as the efficiency of the treatment
systems have noticeably improved. What this shows is that the steps in bringing an instrumentation system together are all important.
These steps are:
• Definition
• Selection
• Installation & Replacement
• Operation & Maintenance
These are the basics on installing and operating an instrument or indeed an instrumentation system but often steps in this process are missed. Let’s look at what
I think are in each of these steps.
Article:
The Instrumentation lifecycle within
the UK Water Industry:
From concept to replacement
Figure 1: SWAN Forum Network Layers
Figure 2: Traditional CAPEX to OPEX Instrumentation Installation
Page 14

Instrumentation definition
This is the step that is often not thought of and the basis of it is “Why am I looking to install a particular instrument?” Let’s take a flow meter on the start of
a treatment process. The obvious answer to the question is “to measure flow” and this is as far as the instruments use is defined. However, the answer is not
necessarily complete as more questions need to be asked. The next question should be “and what are you going to do with the data?” Often with this particular
instrument the answer will be:
• To know what flow is being passed forward
• To monitor compliance
• To control flow to full treatment
• To control dosing rates for iron for Phosphorus removal
• To control storm returns
• To control liquor returns
• All of the above or something else
Generally, instrumentation has a purpose over simple monitoring of what is happening and it’s use needs to be categorised into different tiers of use, for example
Tier 1 – Simple state capture – Any process in the Water Industry is an ever changing or unsteady state. The instrument in Tier 1 use is simply there to capture and
report on the state that the monitored process is in for the parameter or parameters that it is monitoring
Tier 2 – State capture and simple control – In Tier 2 the instrument is there for some sort of control function, either inputting into a wider control system or
providing a simple control function. For example a level controller on a pumping station
Tier 3 – State capture and advanced control – In Tier 3 the instrument is there as part of an advanced control system, it is inputting into a predictive model based
control system as part of a feed forward control, or providing an input into a feedback control system or some sort of cascade loop control system.
These tiers are arguable at best but the demonstrate that defining what an instrument is for will have a fundamental influence on the next steps within the process
of the installation and operation of an instrument.
Instrumentation Selection
Instrumentation selection is where the Water Industry often excels but the nuances of instrumentation selection are sometimes missed, especially if an
instruments use has not been correctly defined. The problem that the Water Industry has is, unless is installed on a newly built asset the selection and subsequent
installation is often a compromise. As such the mode of operation is also a compromise and the instrument is not allowed to function as it necessarily should.
Instrumentation is often application specific and unless major and expensive modifications are made then the compromise exists. What this means in the current
water industry is that supply chain application specialists from the different suppliers are often an absolute necessity in looking at specific applications for the
different instrumentation types.
Cynicism will often exist insofar as engineers will often think that an instrument is being sold for the sake of getting a sale, generally this is not the attitude that
needs to be taken and better cooperation between engineer and application specialists are crucial to the correct installation selection.
Instrumentation Installation & Replacement
The installation of instrumentation should be part and parcel of the instrumentation selection and the role of the application specialist cannot be under-
estimated. There are a number of questions to ask when installing an instrument within the Water Industry especially the wastewater side of the industry due to
the hazards that are ever present.
• Can the instrument being installed effectively and accurately measure within the environment that it is being installed in?
• Once installed is access to the instrument and its associated parts for operation, maintenance and verification purposes possible?
• Can the instrument be replaced easily and relatively quickly?
The first question seems to be obvious but mistakes are made like not installing appropriate up and down stream diameters for electromagnetic flow meters,
installing multi-parameter devices in conditions that are too turbulent to measure. It is this question that the applications specialists from the supply chain
companies will often answer, inputs from operational staff are often useful as well as advice from schemes such as the Environment Agency’s MCERTS scheme.
The second question needs to involve operational and maintenance staff and an understanding of how an instrument is going to be operated and maintained
and perhaps inspected is needed. Even if it’s a case that a meter is there just for Tier 1 measurement and is going to be effectively left to run to failure then the
operational needs must be taken into account otherwise ask the question as to the usefulness of the instrument and whether or not the data that it is going to
produce is actually needed.
The last question is - how, once an instrument is installed, is it going to be replaced and in what timescale is this replacement needed? For example, if it is a
process critical instrument that needs to be replaced in a matter of seconds, minutes or hours then the installation must reflect this. This may mean providing
standby instrumentation in some case or this could be as simple as removing the instrument from the process temporarily or providing a bypass to the main flow
as appropriate.
Instrumentation Operation & Maintenance
The operation and maintenance of instrumentation has been described as a three step process that without the other steps the instrumentation falls down, often
called the instrumentation triangle (figure 3) it involves
Page 15

Article:
What’s driving sensor
development?
Many modern sensors and analysers are ‘intelligent’ – able for example, to retain their own calibration data and report their own health status. These
developments have been designed to improve the quality and reliability of measurement data whilst lowering operational costs. However, as I write this, the
President and CEO of Volkswagen’s US group has admitted that the company “totally screwed up” in using software to rig vehicle emissions tests. This serves
as an important reminder that the ultimate goal for all forms of monitoring is for data to be trustworthy, accurate and reliable.
Testing cars in a ‘laboratory’ seems nonsensical – it would be like testing the wastewater emissions of a pilot plant and then assuming that a ‘real’ plant
operating the same process would generate the same emissions. As a regulated industry, the water sector is risk-averse, which can inhibit innovation but helps
to protect trust and reliability. Nevertheless, water monitoring instrumentation has developed considerably in recent decades and this is mainly because the
drivers for innovation have been relatively drift free.
Cost
The water monitoring instrumentation market is still very competitive, even though there has been a great deal of consolidation, so development engineers
have long been charged with the need to lower costs for demanding water industry clients. In the past, this cost reduction focused on lowering instrument cost
by improved design, sourcing lower cost components and better manufacturing. Then, customers became more conscious of operational costs and there was
a drive to reduce the labour required to service and calibrate instruments, by extending the interval between calibrations for example.
AMP6 has changed the industry’s attitude completely; much to the delight of the major instrument manufacturers. Control and instrumentation engineers are
now looking at the whole-life costs of instruments – the total expenditure (totex), which takes attention away from the initial cost and focuses more on life
• Technology
• System
• Culture
Without each of these elements the instrumentation will fail.
The technology involves installing the correct instrumentation in the correct place, in
the correct way to enable operation and maintenance
The system involves knowing that the instrument exists and the right is in place to
ensure that the instrument can be operated and maintained. This enables capturing
the instrument correctly and enabling those that operate and maintain the instru-
ment have the correct training and knowledge to operate and maintain the instru-
ment but also have the correct tools to do so.
The culture feeds from the definition of the instrument. Often there is the
culture within an organisation that says that an instrument (or anything) should be
operated because there is a job on the system to do so. However if the operator or
maintenance technician knows why an instrument is important and the job that the
instrument does that the job that the operator is doing provides value (and that the
instrument is not just another something that is gathering data that will be ignored)
then the culture of instrumentation becomes ever present and the instrument
becomes a valuable tool.
Discussion
Currently instrumentation tends to undervalued in the Water Industry and this is because its use is not fully defined. Instrumentation tends installed as part
of a major capital project and then that system is maintained in almost status quo like environment. As schemes come along on treatment works the system
is added to and eventually becomes piecemeal. On the networks, especially the wastewater networks, instrumentation outside of pumping stations is near
enough non-existent as when pipework is replaced or even installed from new instrumentation simply isn’t part of the equation. The question needs to be asked
as to whether or not the Water Industry wants to take an instrumentation based systematic approach.
Recent studies have shown that the performance of the wastewater industry could significantly improve and that overall environmental quality could be
improved by controlling the wastewater network, this would of course need instrumentation to achieve this. A start to this is the event duration monitoring
that will be taking place in the UK prior to 2020. This is a start and a start only. In order to achieve effective gains then instrumentation and control schemes are
required across the whole of the water industry especially the wastewater side. This toilet to source approach needs to be taken in a systematic way defining
what it is needed and installing instrumentation systems based upon their own merits. The benefits of this are often undefinable in a financial point of view
without intelligent “guesswork” but where control and advanced control system have been installed they have often proved that the benefits are far greater
that were first originally thought.
This is a big leap for the Water Industry but it is a leap that needs to be taken, instrumentation is the fundamental start of this leap.
Figure 3: Instrumentation triangle of operation & maintenance
Page 16

expectancy, service and operational costs. “Instrumentation tenders are already showing an increased proportion of the scoring based on totex,” reports
Darren Hanson from Xylem Analytics.
Regulations
Water bills will not increase above inflation, but national and European regulations for wastewater treatment and discharge are becoming tighter, so the
water and sewerage companies will have to optimise wastewater treatment in order to comply with the new requirements whilst at the same time improving
efficiency. Also, as participants in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme, water companies are incentivised to lower greenhouse
gas emissions.
Energy efficiency and climate change
Energy costs for aeration represent the largest expenditure for most wastewater treatment works – often accounting for two thirds of the total operating costs.
In recent years, energy costs have increased significantly and pressure has grown to lower consumption and increase the use of renewable energy.
The water and wastewater sectors’ operational emissions represent almost one per cent of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so the industry has an
important role to play in helping fight climate change. Pumping large quantities of water uses a large amount of energy, but the wastewater side of the water
industry has the greatest potential to lower energy use through the process optimisation that is enabled by the latest online monitors.
Competitive advantage
Instrumentation manufacturers are constantly seeking to find ways to improve data quality and to make it easier for customers to collect data. As a result,
instruments have become smaller and more robust, consuming less power, and able to maintain calibration for extended periods, even in remote locations.
Human interfaces have become more intuitive, with less prior training required. However, the enormous progress made in the communication sector has
meant that data can be transferred quickly and easily, often wirelessly. And with web-enabled instruments and cloud storage, data can be made available to a
limitless number of people.
Perhaps the best example of a technology that has been developed as a result of the drivers outlined above is the optical dissolved oxygen sensor, which for
decades has provided vital data for the management of wastewater aeration. Dr Leland Clark invented the original polarographic (Clark cell) sensor in the
1960s and by 1986, 40 per cent of YSI’s sales were a direct result of his inventions. However, this sensor suffered from drift and required regular and frequent
service and recalibration, so the development of optical probes for dissolved oxygen (DO) at the turn of the century was a major development because these
new sensors could be left to operate for months without the need for recalibration.
In addition to DO, more reliable and robust sensors and analysers have become available for other parameters, which has enabled process optimisation.
Using live process monitoring data, it is now possible to implement optimisation in areas such as nitrification control in activated sludge, denitrification
control, biological aerated flooded filter (BAFF) process control and cell management, sludge age control, chemical dosing control for phosphate removal,
sludge thickening and dewatering control.
On the drinking water side of the industry, water companies are now incentivised to improve customer satisfaction and minimise complaints. Drinking water
leaving a treatment plant is obviously tested to ensure that it meets the requirements. However, it may then pass through miles of pipeline before emerging
from a customer’s tap, so technologies have been developed to measure water quality within the distribution network; feeding live data back to the water
company and thereby providing advance notice of any problems, so that complaints can be avoided.
Looking forward
The availability of live data is helping water industry engineers to improve process
management, and some of this data may be useful to other parties. For example,
drinking water quality in the distribution network could be made available to
customers, and information on CSO discharges could be made available to beach users.
The gradual lowering of instrument costs will improve return on investment and
expand the number of plants that benefit from monitoring and control, so that smaller
plants will be included.
From a technology perspective, the drive to lower totex will continue. “There is a move
away from moving parts,” says Darren Hanson. “It can cost hundreds of pounds to
replace a sensor wiper, so many of Xylem’s customers are moving to ultrasonic
cleaning.” Wastewater monitors will become more robust and resistant to fouling and
multi-wavelength sensors are likely to find wider application.
The operating costs of monitors that employ automatic colorimetric analysis will
continue to lower as manufacturers and academics develop microfluidic
instruments that utilise lower quantities of reagents and thereby lower costs, decrease
the frequency of service visits and reduce waste.
Finally, nutrient levels in marine, surface water and groundwater are a major cause for concern and this is feeding into the regulations that affect the water
industry. This, in turn, is affecting the development activities of instrument manufacturers and academic researchers, and exciting new instruments are
already in the pipeline.
With no moving parts, ultrasonic cleaning reduces maintenance costs
Page 17

Article:
GIS: tapping its business potential
Personal use of geographic information systems (GIS) is increasingly common. With sat nav in cars and map software on smart phones, tablets and PCs, aware-
ness of GIS is growing: we are becoming increasingly ‘map mature.’ But are its benefits being used across the business?
GIS allow users to see geographic aspects of a body of data in ways that can be interrogated and manipulated – with a combination of speed, flexibility and de-
tail – that has not been available previously. Consequently GIS brings the ability to visualise, question, analyse, and interpret data; to understand relationships,
patterns and trends – sometimes in wholly new ways.
The level of GIS maturity differs across water companies. This is unsurprising. Water companies are not a homogeneous group. There are, however, some com-
mon trends. Most GIS are being used by specialists; often technical groups who recognise the potential benefits GIS can offer organisations – such as water
companies – which have large physical asset bases, distributed in varying concentrations, over regions of mixed topography, geology and land use. Such groups
include network modellers and asset planners.
It is unusual, but not unknown, for the GIS knowledge within these groups to penetrate far into other areas of the business. Thus it is sometimes the case
that parts of the utility which could benefit from GIS expertise are unaware their organisation already possess the requisite capabilities. Consequently the
business-wide benefits of GIS remain, to date, largely untapped.
Sharing information
There are examples of water companies’ more open-access approaches to GIS.
One company has made a GIS highlighting critical assets in close proximity to
essential public infrastructure, such as hospitals, accessible across the business.
Thus the location of the most high-risk assets can be ascertained swiftly and
widely. Another water company has allowed the GIS team to create its own
data sets and specify their contents. The key point here is that the GIS team is
empowered to request, from all other parts of the business, the data required to
deliver the maximum return on the investment in GIS.
The current pattern of GIS use within water companies is similar to other
utility sectors and comparable industries. As water companies develop formal
GIS strategies – deciding things such as who needs access, what they need access
to, where and when they need access – a number of factors are influencing how
quickly the sector’s use of GIS matures.
Because GIS can be used in many different ways, it is not easy to recognise all of
the benefits they offer. The GIS community, and GIS advocates within
water companies, need to help the utilities gain a fuller understanding of GIS’
possibilities. A recognition of the benefits tends to drive the best data capture. For
example, if operations teams see populating datasets as providing the company with valuable information, rather than form filling, the quality and detail of
the data they provide increases.
Devising a sound GIS strategy is also difficult because, to realise its full potential, the system will not be the preserve of any single part of the water
company. The most effective systems involve gathering, integrating and sharing data across areas of water companies that are traditionally relatively separate:
operations, asset management, capital delivery and customer services, for example. This means there are potentially challenging questions regarding
organisation, implementation and funding.
This brings GIS into the realm of Big Data, which is often defined as pulling together large disparate datasets from numerous sources for a greater use. The
concept is applicable to many water companies thanks to their numerous, separate data requirements and collection strategies. The adoption of big data
strategies, with capabilities such as data mining from across the organisation, would bring huge benefits to the organisation, especially in the totex
environment.
Pinpointing problems
A GIS-based metering app project in Florida, USA, illustrates how the technology can bring benefits across numerous areas of a water company.
The area has 100 per cent meter coverage and each meter is tagged within the app. Including GIS means the water company has location, usage, service history
and billing data for every property. GIS brings a spatial element, allowing teams across the utility to visualise what is happening, and where, throughout the
network. By clicking on a meter displayed in the GIS-based meter app, users can access current and historic consumption and billing data for the location. This
can be compared with data for meters of similar size, age, or usage patterns in other locations, allowing anomalies to be easily identified.
Anomalies can be indicative of meters at risk of failure, leaks, or attempts at theft of service. Because the GIS pinpoints the location of anomalous meter perfor-
mance, the utility is able to target resources to investigate and address the situation efficiently. Data can be viewed and analysed at the property, street, billing
route or district metered area level, allowing heat maps that identify areas requiring investigation and intervention to be generated.
GIS evaluating potential risks posed by intersection of different utilities’ buried assets
Page 18

The app is a powerful tool in the identification, and subsequent remediation, of apparent and real water loss. The former being identified through discrepancies
between billing and consumption data; the latter being identified through analysis of discrepancies between the volume of water entering the system and the
metered consumption in discrete areas.
Many areas of the utility benefit from having this information available in a GIS
format. Resource planners can see which areas are using most water and target
conversation initiatives accordingly. Operations can readily identify where leakage
needs to be addressed. Customer services and billing are able to see where billing
errors and possible duplicity are occurring. Asset management can increase the
efficiency of meter replacement programmes.
Although the Florida project is not directly analogous to the UK – the utility is much
smaller, and there is total meter coverage – it demonstrates how well-used GIS can
support many elements of a water company’s activities simultaneously.
An example with a much wider asset base in the UK was a project to help a
water company prepare for the October 2016 deadline for the adoption of privately
owned pumping stations (PPS).
This project required developing a methodology to identify, locate and determine
the condition of PPS. The work encompassed more than 500 sites. At the centre
of the project was a single, central database accessible to the entire project team.
Innovative use of technology enabled the team to survey up to fifteen sites per day, reducing time on site, increasing the ability to adjust the plan of sites to
be surveyed and crucially, allowing more time to be focused on developing the adoption strategy. Survey teams were equipped with global positioning system
(GPS) enabled tablets to capture data digitally, directly into the single central database. Office teams supported the process using Google Street View to pre-
visit sites, and GPS trackers to keep up to date with the surveyors’ locations.
Two agents of change, in particular, are likely to hasten widespread use of GIS in UK water companies: The entry into the workforce of the first generations
of ‘map mature’ graduates and the adoption of building information modelling (BIM). Many students studying the disciplines sought by water companies
are now equipped with a sound grasp of GIS’ potential and an understanding of how to use the systems; and central to the government’s BIM strategy is
compliance with Publicly Available Specification 1192 (PAS1192) which requires infrastructure projects to include a central data exchange – a single data
repository accessible to all. A data exchange incorporating GIS will offer much more than one without.
Dashboard showing realtime, onsite updates from team surveying location and condition of 30,000 utility assets in urban locations
This GIS-based meter app allows the utility to visualise what is happening, and where,
throughout the network
Paul Hart is an Information Management consultant with strong GIS, database and scripting skills. His professional experience includes risk
analysis for asset management, spatial analysis, database development, cartography, data management, data capture, custom GIS tool
development, application development and web development.
Page 19

Case Study:
Using GIS To Improve Water Incident
Management in Los Angeles
Background
While utilities use sophisticated systems to supply clean water as well as collect and treat wastewater, the effort to manage incidents and outages leaves room
for improvement. Water utilities often rely on manual processes to handle customer reports of leaks, loss-of-service or quality issues. But in many cases, the
manual approach can hamper the effort to correlate problem reports to specific assets and locations. The result can be slow response and subpar interaction
with customers and other agencies. The solution has emerged from a parallel utility: electricity.
The electric utility industry uses automated incident and outage management solutions that combine asset management with geographic information system
(GIS) technology and customer relationship management to improve response and cut costs. The automated systems have produced good results, and other
utilities have noticed.
Water Incident Management in Los Angeles
The City of Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power (LADWP) serves more than four million residents with water and electricity. The largest municipal
water and power utility in the U.S., the LADWP utility services roughly 680,000 water meters. Faced with the challenges of aging infrastructure and limited
budgets, LADWP sought to improve management of incidents such as leaks, outages, or quality issues in delivering water to its customers.
For years, LADWP utilized multiple systems for water incident management customized into their legacy Customer Information System (CIS). One system
handled incidents such as outages, pressure variations, or leaks, while a second system tracked issues related to water quality. A third system managed
daily planned maintenance and repair activities being performed by LADWP field crews. To replace these functions as the CIS was being replaced, and to
streamline its operations, LADWP wanted to find a commercial, off-the-shelf system that would bring incident management for water service to the same level
of performance provided to its electricity customers.
In 2013, LADWP implemented the Trimble eRespond® Incident Management solution to merge the three previously separate systems and improve overall
incident management and customer relations. LADWP selected Trimble eRespond in part because it was a proven solution for water and wastewater utilities
of similar size; it also gave them the ability to leverage LADWP’s existing Esri GIS and tie to their new Oracle Customer Care and Billing (CC&B) solution for
customer information and billing. In addition, the Trimble system met LADWP’s requirement to use a commercial off-the-shelf product.
In addition to using customer calls for incident management, LADWP now has the ability to use Trimble eRespond to blend telemetry data from system pumps
and facilities in the future. This information often provides important input into the effort to locate and resolve a leak, pressure concern, or water quality
incident. Over time, improved asset management will help LADWP achieve longer asset life and improve overall system operations.
Geographic Information for Incident Management
Water and wastewater utilities have miles of underground lines and assets
spread over large areas. During incidents or outages, it’s important to be able
to send crews to the correct location. By connecting its asset database to Esri
ArcGIS server, Trimble eRespond enables response managers to visualize the
location and impact of incidents. The software also utilizes Esri
applications to support asset management and planning activities. By
augmenting schematic depictions of distribution or collection networks with
maps and aerial imagery, the system provides information and flexibility for
both field and office operations.
During an incident, crews can use the GIS to map the severity and extents of
any spills to assist in notification, repairs, and mitigation work. The
spatial data also help to fulfill requirements for reporting water or
wastewater incidents to regulatory agencies.
In addition to its geospatial capabilities, the Trimble solution facilitates best-in-class incident management through tight interaction with leading enterprise
and asset management systems. The system has received certification by SAP and can operate with the Oracle CC&B system. It’s also SAFE certified (Solution
Application Framework for Energy and Utilities) for use with IBM Maximo software. In its 2013 MarketScope report, the Gartner Group cited the eRespond
system’s unique abilities to coordinate with public emergency organizations and to scale to support water and wastewater utilities of all sizes, small and large.
From Data to Information
In concert with IBM, as the system integrator and SAP implementation partner, Trimble eRespond was integrated with the SAP CRM, SAP ECC, and SAP BI
modules using standard interfaces.
The interfaces used a combination of integration technology, including SOAP-based web services, Trimble eRespond’s standard JMS adapter, and direct
database connections. United Utilities decided to create a complete model of their networks in eRespond using the tools within eRespond available for design-
ing and managing a network model. Some utilities link eRespond to whichever system is master of their “as designed” network model data for this information.
The initial network model was created inside a period of four weeks.
Page 20

WIPAC Monthly - December 2015

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