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Every year, it is becoming a tradition to meet a significant number of water and wastewater services companies interested on innovative strategies and technologies to enhance water resilience and drive digital transformation in their companies. Following the tradition established with the SAP Executive Value Network for Water and Wastewater companies meetings held in Europe and Latin America over the past few years, this year we met in Brussels delegates from 16 companies together with software and system integrators including ESRI, Capgemini, digit’Eaux and SAP.
The agenda focused on four main topics: The importance of sector collaboration for innovation, developing a corporate AI strategy, Smart Metering/Smart Water platform, and the adoption of spatial technologies, with inspiring presentations to facilitate comprehensive debates and discussions as related in the following agenda:
- The importance of sector collaboration: Flanders collaborative experience for innovation in the Water Sector: strategy and benefits by De Watergroep
- Developing an AI strategy in a public company by FARYS
- Smart Water Platform by Capgemini:
- Use cases from business perspective
- Leveraging data intelligence beyond smart metering: Water Balance, energy management and AI driven cases
- Test and analytics of digital water meters by Suez
- ESRI on HANA DB: advantages and possibilities combining data from S/4HANA by ESRI
- Leveraging spatial data to build strategic asset management by SAP
SAP Keynote by Alain Maus and Miquel Carbó
The first keynote and subject for discussion has been provided by Bert de Winter from De Watergroep who shared his company's experience of collaboration for innovation in the Water Sector among the water companies in the Flemish region, describing the strategy and benefits obtained. It was a very well received presentation, as this approach has proven to deliver significant benefits, such as economies of scale, which cannot easily be achieved by individual approaches. It is also the foundation of the Smart Water Platform, an ongoing collaborative project among De Watergroep in cooperation with FARYS and PIDPA water companies to achieve business outcomes identified around the usage of smart meter data.
Mrs Inge Opreel, CIO of FARYS changed the dynamic of the group discussion by presenting the concepts and steps taken to define a strategy for the adoption, integration, and responsible use of AI in her company. This presentation generated lots of interest and questions among peer attendees, as they are currently facing the need to evolve from “POCs” – Proof of Concept deliverables – into a much more consistent policy to leverage Artificial Intelligence offerings to improve and achieve gains in operational efficiency, customer engagement, sustainability and other key areas of the company. The discussion also included a discussion of the many challenges associated with AI as well as the need for clarification and common understanding of the term AI and what areas it covers as well as how to explain it. Regarding these mentioned points, a very interesting suggestion by FARYs is to create a “Decision Framework” where to evaluate for each potential use case the adoption criteria can be evaluated based on difference between local and internet connected AI/LLM’s as well as decisions on Sensitivity/privacy of data, ownership of data, need for actual information, need for adaptation, latency, reliability and TCO.
Kevin De Wilde, Engagement Manager and Thought Leader at Capgemini presented a series of use cases of the Smart Water Platform to showcase the value provided by this implementation with the aim of digitizing water networks to address sustainability challenges. After an introductory view of its functional architecture and characteristics, presented some cases of anomalies detected among the installed base of smart meters: continuous consumption, Backflow / no check valve and complex reports and analysis like the Network water remote quality monitoring and the Network water flow monitoring (water balance, leak detection, ILI, …)
Inge Opreel (FARYS), Bert de Winter (De Watergroep) Kevin de Wilde (Capgemini)
Roseline Klein, from SUEZ Digital Solutions introduced the audience to the Technical Centre for Metering and Measurement (CTCM - Centre Technique Comptage et Mesure) which is responsible for defining the rules for managing the metering and measuring instruments used in drinking water and wastewater in SUEZ operations, but which is also increasingly providing expert support to all players in the metering and instrumentation sector, both in France and abroad, with regards to any problems they may encounter. Since its creation in 1999, the CTCM works closely with numerous external parties to support R&D efforts and improvement of metering resulting >5.00 meters and instruments controlled each year. Metering performance and analysis: regulatory controls and EMP (Weighted Average Error), feedback consolidation and anomaly detection, dispute handling, monitoring and understanding of consumption trends and control and monitoring of strategic meters.
The spatial part of the discussion was inspired by the outstanding presentation of Jeroen van Winden from ESRI. He talked about the multiple levels of integration between ArcGIS and SAP including HANA DB, including some interesting use cases and examples, showing as well cases of integration using API's on web services and at application level in both platforms. This slot was complemented by Miquel Carbó from SAP addressing in his presentation how to leverage spatial data to build strategic asset management, this is a wholistic view of the entire lifecycle of the technical assets, both from the execution part (Investment to Comission or Inspections and corrective maintenance) or in the proactive part (asset risk analysis, health indexes or asset investment planning scenarios) where in all these capabilities the spatial dimension is fundamental.
Jeroen Van Winden (ESRI), Roseline Klein (Suez Digital Solutions), Miquel Carbó (SAP)
Overall, the session was intense and the networking opportunies were very high. The collaboration among SAP and the participant companies has once again raised the expectations of the delegates from the Water and Waste Water industry by providing such high quality inspiring speeches and facilitating fluent and interesting networking to a level that makes it very difficult but a motivating challenge to keep the level for next year!
