Data Driven Water Management Solutions

The Challenge

The Utilities and Water Supply sector deals with very particular challenges – the management of a scarce resource (drinking water) in a setting of massive supply and drainage networks dealing with volumes of millions of litres, where network issues or faulty equipment can have dire consequences.

Devoteam Portugal developed a two front solution that addresses the main pressure points of this industry – the monitorization of the network and the management of the measuring equipment.

Water Network Monitorization – Water supply and drainage networks deal with incredible volumes, often with rudimentary systems for controlling and acquiring usage metrics, which can lead to significant losses. There is an absolute need for accurate metrics to determine usage patterns, quickly react to unforeseen events and facilitate better decision making.

Meter Management – the water meter is a crucial piece of equipment in this industry. It monitors the volume of water that is consumed and ultimately charged to the end-user – errors in measurement or faulty equipment are a major source of revenue loss.

The Solution

The Water Network Monitorization Solution was designed to obtain accurate metrics in real time, using IoT integration with sensors installed along the water distribution network. This solution allows the client to collect and process data received by dozens of sensors spread throughout the network, monitor utilization patterns in real time and generate simplified and intuitive reports to support business decision processes.

The system processes the data by zone and compares them to the historical data (revealing usage and consumption patterns); enables real-time monitorization of water flow pressure and other hydraulic variables; and facilitates identification of abnormal behaviors and patterns in the network – which in turn allows the decrease of field team’s response time to issues or emergencies.

The Meter Management Solution was designed as a countermeasure to revenue loss resulting from errors in measurement or faulty equipment. Devoteam PT used OutSystems technology to create a solution that optimises the process of water meters management by monitoring water consumption patterns and assessing measurement errors – helping define a tailored plan for meter replacement and allowing the acquisition of more reliable water consumption patterns data, with many different possible applications (predictions of  stress periods, over-consumption, etc.).

In the first year of implementation, 470.714 issues were identified and addressed using this solution (anomalous consumption, stopped/ damaged meter, sizing or replacement, data reliability issues) – that allowed for calculated savings of 2.814.276 m3 in water and 4.986.990 € in revenue recovery.