07 May 2024
Scottish Water provides drinking water to 2.46 million households and 150,000 business customers across Scotland. It supplies 1.34 billion litres of drinking water and removes 847 million litres of wastewater from customer properties daily, treating it before returning it to the environment.
Treating and delivering water for more than 2 million customers is an incredible task, especially in the face of rising environmental issues. Scottish Water recognised the need to move to a proactive and predictive approach that would transform how it manages the wastewater network. The operator would have real-time insights, allowing it to schedule interventions rather than just respond to events, avoiding customer inconvenience and environmental impact.
Transitioning to a smart sewer network and utilising real-time data insights would give the provider control to reduce the risk of flooding and pollution incidents with real-time event notifications. Additionally, this would help Scottish Water to align with statutory regulations from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).
Overhauling the network
Eager to overhaul its wastewater network management systems to align with eco-friendly environmental mandates, Scottish Water selected Eviden, an Atos Group company, as its lead partner for the Wastewater Intelligent Network (WWIN) project.
Eviden suggested that Scottish Water maximise the value of an intelligent network by targeting areas for the most beneficial deployment. The installation required a phased roll-out of intelligent network technology and leveraging data from business information modelling to assign resources effectively.
A third-party professional services company was initially engaged for the physical installation, field validation and configuration. Eviden arranged the procurement and selection of the level and flow sensors in the pilot phase, and provided the necessary cloud integrations, system architecture, built environment and associated data processing and visualisation.
The first phase included several activities that played a pivotal role in transforming Scottish Water’s wastewater network management, including establishing a strong data collection infrastructure by selecting advanced IoT sensor technology to ensure secure, uninterrupted data capture; managing the installation of IoT sensors; delivering a robust, secure and scalable data platform that receives data from the installed sensors in the network, routes and processes it, and raises necessary notifications or alarms to any abnormal behaviour; extracting data insights from the IoT platform to populate dashboards, reports and future predictive models, as well as analytics to understand and maintain normal operations; and managing day-to-day operations to ensure seamless functioning, and maintain or handle any changes.
The six-month pilot phase involved the rollout of nearly 300 sensors at four Drainage Operation Areas (DOAs), and the implementation of an IoT platform, data analytics and visualisations. Real-time insights from the sensors, dashboards and timely reports were instrumental in quicker deployments and clean-ups in those areas prone to flooding and choking, thereby reducing the number of incidents following the pilot phase.
The second phase is ongoing, due to be completed in August 2024, and will see the solution scaled up to ensure that nearly 3,000 sensors are deployed across Scotland with increased capabilities added to the platform. This includes integration with existing telemetry data and the introduction of enhanced artificial intelligence and machine learning. Eviden will also support the people and process change management that will be needed to transfer the intelligent network into business as usual.
“The number of stakeholders and complexity and scale of the existing processes in place across our organisation requires a high degree of consultation and cross-team collaboration,” said Ally Gorst, product owner – WWIN Solution, Scottish Water. “Not only did Atos steer the WWIN project successfully from end-to-end but also worked closely with our teams and partners to launch the pilot phase within six short months.”
Real-time visibility
Eviden’s solution has proven a win for Scottish Water.
The utility provider can now detect, respond, and mitigate incidents quickly, with accurate real-time insights to proactively manage the wastewater network. The enhanced monitoring network around Scottish Water’s bathing waters has proved a boon, as has the reduced environmental pollution events from the network. Moreover, with the project, Scottish Water has achieved increased compliance with Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). In addition, the solution has afforded a decrease in environmental pollution events from the network, as well as the number of customers impacted by incidents such as flooded sewers.
“The data insights from this project have already proven instrumental in helping us detect and avoid pollution incidents in the last few months,” said Gorst. “The pace of delivery has resulted in some challenges along the way, but the initiative has exceeded expectation and is delivering benefits to our customers and the environment even in its infancy.”
One particularly noteworthy win came from the pilot in July 2022, when the level monitor within the drainage area showed a significant increase and raised an alarm via the dashboard, triggering a notification to the response team. There was a communication fault with the pumping station, but the control room was unaware that the pumps had failed. The platform ensured that the problem was clearly identified, and action was taken to repair the pumps and prevent any release into sensitive bathing water.
