Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WATERGUARD (Safeguarding Water Distribution Systems from Contamination Threatsusing the SmartTap Platform)
Période du rapport: 2015-07-01 au 2015-12-31
Contaminations are rare events with high impact; currently, in order to identify accidental and even malicious contamination events, water utilities rely on manual sampling to monitor water quality, in accordance to EU regulations. However, it may take days before a contamination event is detected. The present state of art is to install a small number of quality sensors measuring different parameters at various locations in the network, and connect them to a SCADA system where an operator monitors the measured signals. Some sensors provide their own proprietary software system for sensor data analysis, although in a typical system, sensors of various brands may be utilized. The most sophisticated event detection solutions have extremely high costs, which are prohibitive for the significant majority of water providers in Europe, as well as in the international market.
As part of the WaterGuard Project, Aqualligence Ltd conducted a feasibility study in view of the company’s plans for the commercialization of its innovative AquaRisk software platform, which enhances the security of water distribution systems through early-warning and detection of water contamination events. The AquaRisk platform is a cloud-based software, which receives information from internet-enabled sensors as well as from water utility SCADA systems, processes hydraulic and quality data and produces alerts with every event detection.
The feasibility study has significantly improved our understanding of the market and its needs, allowing us to fine-tune the product for operators providing water to European small cities and communities, which is crucial for the second phase of the commercialization.
The main findings of this feasibility study are that the continuous water quality market will expand in the following years due to changes in regulations, that the water industry is investing in new water quality monitoring technologies, and that a sustainable business model for water quality monitoring can be identified.
To demonstrate the impact, based on the results of the feasibility study, if our water quality monitoring service is provided to 100 small towns in Europe with 5,000,000 consumers consuming 350 Mm3 per year it would reduce the risk for a high-impact contamination event which; if one contamination event were to occur, this could cost more than 5M€ in liabilities and productivity losses. Furthermore, the continuous online monitoring will assist water utilities become more efficient in manual water quality sampling, thus reducing the associated analysis cost by 10-15%. In addition, quality events may be associated with leakage events, and as a result, water waste could be reduced by 0.5-1% which corresponds to 0.4–0.7 Mm3 per year.