Scottish Water transforms wastewater network management into an intelligent asset base able to predict and prevent issues

Navigating through challenging waters

Treating and delivering water for more than 2 million customers is an incredible task, especially in the face of rising environmental issues. In recent years, Scottish Water has witnessed the rate of climate change and its significant impact on the environment and customer lives with environmental pollution incidents and sewer chokes.

Scottish Water understood that moving to a proactive and predictive approach would transform how it manages the wastewater network. The utility would have real-time insights, allowing them to schedule interventions rather than just respond to events, avoiding customer inconvenience and environmental impact.

Transitioning to a smart sewer network and utilizing real-time data insights would give the utility provider control to reduce the risk of flooding and pollution incidents with real-time event notifications. Additionally, this would help Scottish Water to align with statutory regulations from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). Eager to overhaul its wastewater network management systems to align with eco-friendly environmental mandates, Scottish Water selected Eviden as its partner for the Wastewater Intelligent Network (WWIN) project.

The smart choice with Eviden’s wastewater management solution

 Building on a longstanding partnership, Scottish Water leveraged Eviden’s expertise in the utility sector and digital transformation skills to deliver this project. One of the key suggestions from Eviden was to maximize the value of an intelligent network by targeting areas for the most beneficial deployment. The installation required a phased roll-out of intelligent network technology and leveraging data from business information modelling to assign resources effectively.

Eviden was chosen as the lead partner to implement the end-to-end wastewater management project. A third-party professional services firm was initially engaged for the physical installation, field validation and configuration. Eviden also arranged the procurement and selection of the level and flow sensors in the pilot phase. Last but far from least, Eviden provided the necessary cloud integrations, system architecture, built environment and associated data processing and visualization.

The first phase included several activities that played a pivotal role in transforming Scottish Water’s wastewater network management:

1. Establishing a strong data collection infrastructure by selecting advanced IoT sensor technology to ensure secure, uninterrupted data capture
2. Managing the installation of IoT sensors
3. Delivering a robust, secure and scalable data platform that receives data from the installed sensors in the network, routes and processes it, and raises necessary notifications or alarms to any abnormal behavior
4. Extracting data insights from the IoT platform to populate dashboards, reports and future predictive models, as well as analytics to understand and maintain normal operations
5. Managing day-to-day operations to ensure seamless functioning, and maintain or handle any changes

The six-month pilot phase involved the rollout of nearly 300 sensors at four Drainage Operation Areas (DOAs), and the implementation of an IoT platform, data analytics and visualizations. Real-time insights from the sensors, dashboards and timely reports were instrumental in quicker deployments and clean-ups in those areas prone to flooding and choking, thereby reducing the number of incidents following the pilot phase.

In the second phase, December 2022 to August 2024, the solution will be scaled up to ensure that nearly 3,000 sensors are deployed across Scotland with increased capabilities added to the platform. This includes integration with existing telemetry data and the introduction of enhanced artificial intelligence and machine learning. Eviden will also support the people and process change management that will be needed to transfer the intelligent network into business as usual.