Partnerships to harness AI to combat non-revenue water
Image: AQS by Aliaxis
New partnerships with utility AI platform provider VODA.ai are aimed to detect water leaks and improve pipe asset management.
Israel headquartered Aquarius Spectrum (AQS) and Itron have sealed partnerships to utilise VODA.ai’s AI engine to improve the management of water leaks and thereby improve the operational efficiency of water utilities.
The approach of AQS, a specialist in acoustic monitoring and leak detection, is aimed to deliver an integrated, holistic solution to addressing non-revenue water issues.
Newly identified leaks through AQS’s advanced acoustic correlating sensors will continuously feed into VODA.ai’s platform in order to provide insights to enable utilities to make informed decisions promptly.
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“At AQS, we are committed to creating a robust eco-system partnership network where each partner contributes a crucial piece to solving the non-revenue water puzzle,” says Koen Verweyen, CEO of AQS.
“By combining our strengths, we aim to provide comprehensive solutions that tackle non-revenue water from all angles, ensuring a seamless and effective approach to water management.”
With its partnership Itron is introducing its Pipe Asset Management solution, which is aimed to help utilities with pipe replacement decisions.
The solution combines detailed meter data from Itron’s end-to-end water portfolio with data the utility is already collecting, such as GIS data and historical pipe failure data, and is fed into VODA.ai’s daVinci AI engine to identify pipes that need replacing or rehabilitating.
In a statement Itron quotes a Utah State University study that approximately 20%, or 720,000km, of water pipes in the US and Canada are beyond their useful lives and need to be replaced.
Water utilities often are faced with trouble identifying pipes that are at high risk of failure, comments Don Reeves, senior vice president of Outcomes at Itron.
“Rather than using guesswork to select pipes for replacement, which may still have useful life, Itron and VODA.ai are helping utilities use science and AI to overcome this challenge.”
He also notes that the tool’s lead pipe inventory replacement solution, which uses AI to identify lead composition in water pipes, is also crucial to ensuring the safe delivery of drinking water into the future.
