World Water Day: Smart technologies for water utilities

The measurement and monitoring of water is key for the management and sustainability of our most important natural resource.

Water makes up three-quarters of the Earth, but only 2.5% of it is fresh – and much of that is in the form of groundwater in underground aquifers, which rely on rain and in some regions snowfall infiltrating the ground for replenishment.

There are several challenges, however, for groundwater – and the focus of World Water Day 2022 on March 22.

One is that in some places the amount of water in such aquifers is unknown. Another is pollution from fertilisers or other sources similarly infiltrating the ground. A third is that overall demand is increasing with demands from an increasing population as well as from agriculture and industry, and related to that as well as changing climatic patterns, extractions are exceeding replenishment, potentially putting the future of the aquifer at risk.

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That is without mentioning that despite the efforts of the Sustainable Development Goals, about one-quarter of the global population – some 2 billion people – still lack access to safe drinking water and about half lack safe sanitation.

Ultimately the availability of water depends on its management across the value chain from extraction to treatment, distribution, use and reuse, with technologies and tools available in the water sector similar to those familiar in the electricity sector.

Arguably the most fundamental is metering, which enables billing based on use and the detection of leaks whether in the networks or customers’ premises, but in some parts of the world it is lacking. In the UK for example, approximately half of homes have yet to be metered.

Traditional wisdom is that approximately 30% of water is lost to leaks representing a significant loss to distributors and potentially costly repairs if undetected for any length of time. With the implementation of leak detection technologies, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority claim one of the lowest loss rates in the world of approximately 5%.

The UN highlighted in the World Water Day factsheet that most of the world’s large aquifers are transboundary – some 468 have been identified worldwide – requiring a level of cooperation that is so far limited.

“With the increasing use of groundwater resources worldwide, the need for stronger specific cooperation on transboundary groundwaters has become ever more evident and urgent,” the UN says.

“We cannot manage what we do not measure. Groundwater must be thoroughly explored, analysed and monitored.”