Open water data platform launched in Britain

The Stream open data platform has been launched in beta format for data sharing for research, decision making and public awareness among other purposes.

The Stream service, which has emerged from a Northumbrian Water initiated project in partnership with the majority of Britain’s other water suppliers and other organisations including the Open Data Institute, is aimed to unlock the potential of open data and stimulate innovation and collaboration in the sector.

Its appearance follows a drive by the regulator Ofwat to create an open data and data sharing culture, initially voluntary but in time to become compulsory via a licence condition, to capture the benefits it can offer.

The water companies have a wealth of data about their water and wastewater systems but also how those services interact with communities and the environment but mostly it remains siloed within the individual companies.

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“We need to operate as a sector as our challenges do not stop at company borders and bringing data together will help us solve those challenges,” says Melissa Tallack of Northumbrian Water, who is co-leading the initiative with lead architect Andy Myers.

“Most innovations involve data in some shape or form, so having this sector approach should help to enable future innovations.”

Data is available via a search function on the Stream platform – there isn’t a category listing so far – with the first use case tags including ‘Domestic tap water quality’, ‘Utility mapping’ and ‘Water quality parameters’.

With all of the water companies at some stage of a smart meter rollout, some form of consumption data is likely to become available in due course.

Ofwat has indicated that while its approach to open data means making data freely available to everyone to access, use and share, it does not mean that all data should be shared in its basic form.

However, where it is closed, for example for privacy or business reasons, justification is required and it can be made available in a more controlled, aggregated and anonymised form.

Specific opportunities that Ofwat has identified for open data include encouraging development of new business models and service offerings that increase efficiencies and enhance the customer experience and providing insights on company performance and assets to improve decision-making.

Others include enabling companies to work collaboratively to tackle shared challenges and improving transparency and trust for customers

The Stream platform is being developed with support from Ofwat with ‘Day 1’ targeted for April 2024 with what will be a pipeline of sector agreed use case datasets.