The use of internet of things (IoT) technology, combined with a software as a service (SaaS) platform, will help water companies stay on the right side of government rules on the quality of water in England’s rivers.
Rules coming into force this year mean it will no longer be the easy option for water companies to simply pay fines rather than fix the problem, with the cap on fine limits removed and the threat of prison for water company directors who break the rules introduced.
Not-for-profit Additive Catchments has teamed up with Capgemini in a 10-year agreement that will see the IT services giant build a river quality monitoring service with the scale needed to support water companies in England and beyond.
Additive Catchments’ catchment monitoring as a service (CMaaS) uses sensors in rivers, which feed data and artificial intelligence-driven insights to a cloud-based software platform used by water companies, environment regulators and even the public.
The CMaaS project also includes the University of Plymouth, digital infrastructure from Siemens and monitoring consultancy from AtkinsRéalis, as well as an ecosystem of installation and maintenance companies in the UK.
This type of technology is a necessity for water companies and those monitoring their activity after section 82 of the 2021 Environment Act comes into effect this year. It requires all water companies in the UK to implement continuous monitoring upstream and downstream of discharge points, and has created a massive environmental monitoring programme.
Rob Passmore, CEO and co-founder at Additive Catchments, said the three-year-old organisation has a mission to improve river health in the UK and eventually internationally. He said Section 82 means water companies can be fined heavily, and senior directors could even face prison sentences for serious failures. “It’s significant and the legislation has teeth,” Passmore told Computer Weekly. “It will no longer be easier just to pay the fines, and as a result, all water companies are mobilising projects around this.”
Under the rules, water companies must have 25% of their storm overflow discharge points monitored by 2030 and 100% by 2035.
The regulators and public will be able to keep an eye on river water quality through the platform.
“Fundamentally, we don’t really understand what’s happening in our rivers because we haven’t got the data points necessary to really understand where there are problems, where we’re doing things well, where we’re doing things terribly and how to design interventions in a way that is effective and cost effective,” said Passmore.
The partnership with Capgemini gives the organisation the delivery capability required to scale the platform nationally and internationally.
“This is the largest environmental monitoring project in the world. It’s huge,” said Passmore. “We give information to all river catchment stakeholders, including the government, agriculture, water companies, etc.”
Operations technology
The CMaaS uses IoT connectivity to send readings from rivers every 15 minutes. According to Passmore, “from an IT and operations technology (OT) perspective, it’s enormous”.
He said the legislation has only just come into effect, and water companies now need to put sensors and monitoring capabilities in place or face heavy fines.
“We are actively engaging with all of the English water companies, who are actively procuring to address this,” said Passmore.
There is a commercial pilot of CMaaS already underway with Anglian Water.
The work will see Capgemini support the building of the platform, running the service at a national and international scale, as well as research and development looking at new opportunities like Earth observation and machine learning capabilities that can be integrated into the service in the future.
Paul Haggerty, head of UK energy and utilities at Capgemini, said there is demand for the service from outside the UK. “We are a global organisation and conversations are in place beyond the UK, in countries such as France, Belgium, Australia and Dubai,” he said.
“There’s climate change, which is putting all sorts of pressure on water, and there’s significant population growth going on, and in our view, business as usual is not going to cut it,” Haggerty told Computer Weekly. “You can’t expect a different outcome if you’re faced with those challenges and those numbers by doing the same thing again.”
