Schneider Electric research across seven European markets has found that more than half of industrial leaders expect water availability or quality to become a serious constraint on growth within five years, while 44% believe a severe supply interruption could begin affecting operations within 24 hours.
The June 2026 survey covered 340 senior respondents, comprising 210 industrial leaders at director level or above from businesses employing more than 1,000 people and 130 decision makers working in water utilities, municipalities and public water infrastructure.
Participants came from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Nordic markets of Sweden and Denmark, with industrial respondents spanning manufacturing, energy and chemicals, life sciences and pharmaceuticals, machinery and equipment, semiconductors and electronics, construction, and food and beverage production.
Water ranked alongside cyber attacks and supply chain disruption among continuity concerns, with 14% of industrial respondents saying availability or quality already constrained operations or growth. A further 52% expected water to become a serious barrier within five years, placing future supply conditions directly within capital and production planning.
Recent water stress is already appearing in operating costs and asset budgets. Forty four per cent said it had increased costs during the previous two years, 38% reported pressure on infrastructure and maintenance spending and 30% had experienced supply chain disruption. Companies have responded by increasing water efficiency investment in 47% of cases, while 43% had reviewed water risk at board level.
Exposure varies according to the industrial process because water can be an ingredient, washing medium, cooling fluid, steam feed or part of hygiene and environmental control. A factory can therefore lose production even when electricity, labour and raw materials remain available if a critical process cannot obtain sufficient water of the required quality.
Quality can be as restrictive as quantity because minerals, suspended solids, microorganisms and chemical contaminants affect boilers, heat exchangers and finished products differently. Semiconductor, pharmaceutical and food production can require closely controlled specifications, meaning an alternative local supply may still require significant treatment before it can replace the normal source.
The 44% of respondents expecting a serious interruption to affect operations within 24 hours have limited time to absorb a supply problem before production begins to deteriorate. Storage can extend that period, but tanks require physical space and capital, while stored water must still meet the relevant process specification and can be consumed quickly by sites with high continuous demand.
Digital systems are increasingly being used to improve visibility over that consumption. Fifty five per cent of industrial respondents had installed smart meters and 56% had introduced automated controls, creating more frequent information about demand and allowing abnormal usage to be identified faster than periodic manual readings.
Measurement location determines how useful that information becomes. A meter at the site inlet can show that total consumption has risen but cannot identify whether the change comes from production growth, a cooling system, cleaning activity or a leak. Measurements distributed across major process users can separate those causes and allow water consumption to be compared with the quantity of product being manufactured.
Digital twins and network modelling can extend that measurement into simulation, although deployment remains behind awareness. Fifty eight per cent of industrial leaders were familiar with those technologies but had not implemented them, indicating substantial recognition of the tools without equivalent installation across the sites surveyed.
A network model can estimate how changes in demand, storage, pumping or pipe configuration affect supply before physical modifications are made, while comparison between expected and measured behaviour can help identify leakage or another abnormal condition. Its usefulness still depends on the quality of the underlying plant data and the accuracy of the physical model represented in software.
Physical infrastructure remains part of the same resilience system because monitoring cannot increase storage volume, repair deteriorated pipework or expand treatment capacity by itself. Data can identify where losses occur and where investment may have the greatest effect, while pumps, tanks, treatment equipment and distribution networks ultimately determine whether sufficient water reaches the process.
Confidence in digital water technology is high among respondents, with 86% of industrial leaders and 98% of water sector participants saying smart systems could reduce operating costs. More than four fifths also associated the technology with stronger continuity and sustainability performance, although those responses represent expectations across the survey rather than measured savings from individual installations.
Industrial water resilience therefore depends on linking process demand with source availability, treatment, storage and internal distribution. Sites exposed to production loss within a day of disruption need sufficient measurement to identify abnormal consumption and enough physical capacity to maintain critical processes while supply conditions change.
