Smart Water Project of the Year
Dubai Hydro Insight, UAE
What is it?
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) is the sole distributor of drinking water in the emirate of Dubai. The Hydro Insight project involves the in-house development of a fully automated monitoring system of over 1 million smart meters by the utility, implemented to improve visibility on a range of areas including water meter anomalies, unaccounted-for water, outages, and high water usage.
Who is involved?
DEWA developed the software internally, while DIEHL Metering, Badger Meter, SENSUS and ELSTER Metering provided smart meters. Telecommunications company Etisalat also partnered with DEWA during the project.
What makes it special?
The in-house development of the analytics system – a world first for a water utility – meant a substantial reduction in implementation time, estimated at two years in comparison to an implementation by external vendors. This resulted in estimated savings of nearly $6 million for the utility.
Meter anomaly detection time decreased dramatically, from 30 days to a mere one hour, translating to the conservation of 214 million gallons of water since 2017, a crucial development in such a water-stressed part of the world. Meanwhile, the speedy replacement of over 40,000 faulty meters detected within their warranty period also contributed to significant savings for the utility.
DEWA has mastered a customer-centric approach through a proactive free-of-charge service that identifies genuine leakages in customer premises, notifying the customer quickly to play a crucial role in conserving 11 billion gallons of water since 2018, representing $165.5 million in retained value. Although DEWA’s unaccounted-for water rates were already at an exemplary 6%, Hydro Insight allowed the utility to reduce this even further to 4.6%.
Distinction
Lahaina emergency sewer assessments, USA
What is it?
The Hawaii wildfires in August 2023 devasted the island of Maui, causing loss of life and destroying 2,200 buildings in the town of Lahaina. Water infrastructure recovery efforts following the Lahaina Fire included the use of Jacobs’ AI-powered condition assessment tool to assess the condition of sewer infrastructure assets that may have been damaged by the fire.
Who is involved?
Jacobs provided its Dragonfly system – jointly developed with Hitachi – which integrates AI for enhanced sewer condition assessment and guidance. Jacobs worked with the EPA and County of Maui while the Federal Emergency Management Agency also assisted.
What makes it special?
Rapid and comprehensive assessments provided essential data for Maui County’s recovery strategy, identifying defects that were leading to critical infiltration into the sewer network. Inflow into the sewer network affected the County’s wastewater treatment plant and was limiting the ability to bring service areas back online fast.
The rapid analysis capabilities of Dragonfly are projected to have provided time savings of 1,600 hours over the life of the recovery project, a critical benefit helping to focus efforts where they are needed most. As well as helping the County to strategically plan its rehabilitation and restoration work, Dragonfly helped identify areas that were ready for residents to safely return.
The project illustrates how digital technologies play an integral role in enhancing emergency response and must be a key part of the toolkit for ensuring the resiliency of utilities worldwide.