Eoin Lane, IBM Smarter Water Architect

By Eoin Lane

People often say that water is the new oil, but really, it’s not. Oil is a fossil fuel that takes millions of years and a lot of pressure to create. When we burn oil – for example, by driving our cars – it is gone forever (or at least for a few more millions of years before it can be created again!).

Water, on the other hand, cannot be created or destroyed (this is not strictly true, but bear with me). The same amount of water is around today that was around when the Earth was formed. The truth is there is a lot of water on Earth – just not a lot of drinking water.

Here are some facts about just how little drinkable water is available:

* 97.5 percent of all water on Earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5 percent as fresh water
* Of that fresh water, nearly 70 percent is locked in ice
* Most of the rest of that freshwater is in aquifers which we are draining much more quickly than the natural recharge rate
* Two-thirds of our freshwater is used to grow food
* With 83 million more people on Earth each year, water demand will keep going up unless we change how we use it.[1]

Margaret Catley-Carlson of the Global Water Partnership has said, ”We cannot create water, but we can manage it better, much better.” [2] Take, for example, the longest water tunnel supplying NYC: it is 85 miles long, and it leaks 35 million gallons of water every day. We need to become much smarter about how we manage this precious resource and about how we collect, analyze and use water data.

There are three ways we can become smarter about water management:  Instrumentation, Big Data analytics, and cooperation.

Instrumentation involves smart meters and sensors that take digital readings (pressure, flow etc.) and stores them in a database. The combination of smart meter data and GPS location data allows for rich visualization of the information. On top of this we can also display water pipe information, asset information (such as manholes, pumps, and work orders), as well as customer information. We can be smart about this and organize all of the information using a semantic model. For now, think of a semantic model as a flexible model that allows us to connect information from different sources, for example, one that allows the water utility operator to determine what pipes are associated with which customers.

Big Data analytics can then be applied to the data collected through instrumentation. We can classify analytics into three broad categories:

•  Descriptive analytics (finding patterns in things that happened in the past)
•  Prescriptive or optimization analytics (the math of making things better in the present)
•  Predictive analytics (foretelling the future)

Let’s look at concrete examples of these, as applied to an instrumented water system.

To understand the power of descriptive analytics, watch the movie Moneyball. Moneyball tells the story of a poor baseball team that takes a sophisticated descriptive analytics approach and wins 20 consecutive games. The same kind of descriptive analytics can be applied to water assets such as pipes, pumps, etc. Descriptive analytics could allow a water utility to pinpoint leaky water pipes down to a particular type of pipe that’s manufactured by a local company.

For prescriptive or optimization analytics, let’s travel to Europe. I come from a town in southern Ireland called Cork, and a couple of years ago I was walking home when I met some water utility workers making holes in the road. After chatting with them, I learned that the holes in the road were for acoustic sensors, which use sound to locate leaks. I also found out that the pipe networks were very old, and nobody knew where the pipes really were. But they did know they were leaking very badly. This story is echoed across many European cities and towns, and indeed, around the world.

One of the major contributing factors to these leaks is the water pressure in the pipes, which is kept high to ensure good pressure on the tap side. However, analytics can help here. We can run optimization analytics on the pressure reading data across the network to optimize the pressure in the network. This optimization will still maintain good pressure on the tap side, but bring down the overall pressure in the water network. Long term, this will reduce wear and tear on the pipes, and as a consequence reduce the leaks.

Lastly, predictive analytics can provide water utilities with information about when leaks or failures (pumps, pipes, sensors, meters, etc.) are likely to occur.

The theme of World Water Day 2013 is the International Year of Water Cooperation. Instrumentation and Big Data analytics are truly the foundation for cooperation about water management. Getting back to our Moneyball analogy, analytics enabled the Oakland A’s to build a better baseball team, for less money, but team players still had to cooperate and play as a team in order to win. Citizens and corporations, alike, must also cooperate when it comes to smarter water management.

In some communities such as Dubuque, Iowa, citizens use online water conservation portals to gain a better understanding of their water usage. They can also compare their water use with other similar local households. Here we are seeing cooperation between the citizens and the water utility company. Citizens can also collaborate by becoming the collective “eyes” of the water utility. This allows for authorities to get up-to-the-minute information on the state of the water infrastructure and prioritize fixing these problems. Check out the WaterWatcher initiative in South Africa.

I believe we can manage our water better by making our water networks smarter and by encouraging cooperation.

I’ll be on a live Facebook chat today, to discuss how technology can help conserve water. Please join me.

But before I go, I will leave you with a few more sobering facts about how we currently use water:

Americans use about 100 gallons of water at home every day * Millions of the world’s poorest subsist on fewer than five gallons per day * 46 percent of the people on Earth do not have water piped to their homes * Women in developing countries walk an average of 3.7 miles daily to get water * In 15 years 1.8 billon people (a third of the world’s current population) will live in regions of severe water scarcity [1]

_______________________________________________________________

1. National Geographic – Water Our Thirsty World

2. The Atlas of Water – Maggie Black et al.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, IBM Smarter Planet, smarter analytics, smarter utilities, Smarter Water, smarter water management, utilities, water management

Ahmed Simjee, Smarter Planet Leader, IBM South Africa

By Ahmed Simjee

When I was growing up in South Africa, my family was fortunate.  We had access to fresh drinking water. At first we lived on a small farm near Johannesburg, where we used a well. Later, when I moved closer to the city, I had good tap water. But many of my fellow South Africans weren’t so lucky, and, even today, many people in the rural areas and in informal settlements near the cities don’t have ready access to fresh drinking water. That’s why I’m extremely pleased to be spearheading an initiative in South Africa, WaterWatchers, which is aimed at using mobile phones and crowdsourcing to cut down on leaks and wasted water.

We’re launching our free WaterWatchers app today in Gauteng Province, home of Johannesburg and the capital city, Tshwane. With 12.3 million residents, the province represents 23% of South Africa’s population. We timed the launch to coincide with the United Nations’ World Water Day. If you’re in South Africa, please download the app.

We hope that once government leaders elsewhere in South Africa see WaterWatchers at work in Gauteng Province, they will adopt the service as well. South Africa is the only country in the world to include access to fresh water as a basic human right in its constitution, and the government has set a goal of extending that benefit to every citizen by 2020. Our WaterWatchers program will help South Africa achieve universal access to fresh water. Using SMS, the app enables citizens to quickly and conveniently report leaks and unauthorized use of water.

Communal tap in Johannesburg Credit: E. Muench

South Africa suffers from a critical water problem. It’s one of the driest places on earth, with average annual rainfall of just 45.7 cm, half the global number. South Africa ranks 148 out of 180 countries for water availability per capita, according to the United Nations World Water Development Report 2012. At the same time, in South African municipalities, an average of 37% of the water pushed through public water systems is lost via leaks or pilferage. In Tshwane alone, these losses cost the municipality about $50 million a year. South Africa’s draft National Water Resource Strategy estimates that it will cost about $100 billion to upgrade and expand the country’s water infrastructure over the next decade. So any savings from reducing waste and pilferage can be reinvested in system upgrades.

WaterWatchers takes advantage of the rapid spread of mobile phones in South Africa, where just about every adult now owns a hand set. Using the application, people take photos and answer three simple questions about water problems they observe. Then they SMS the information to a central database. All of the messages are stored and analyzed to help municipal authorities spot problems, dispatch repair crews and set maintenance  priorities. Using analytics technologies, officials will be able to predict where and when problems are likely to occur and plan pro-active maintenance.

Citizens with Internet access can also tap into a WaterWatchers portal. There, they can learn about water conservation and view a leak hotspot map showing where problems exist in their municipal water systems.

IBM  began exploring the idea of using crowdsourcing to address water issues in San Jose, Calif., with its CreekWatch mobile app. The simple application enables people with Apple iPhones to take photos of reservoirs and creeks they pass to report water levels and potential pollution problems. CreekWatch is now being used in 25 countries. The WaterWatchers app, built by IBM business partner Element Blue LLC, has additional capabilities, including the ability to post photos on Twitter and social networking Web sites. It’s available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices.

Once municipalities get the benefits of WaterWatchers, I hope it will be an eye-opener to the potential for using other cutting-edge technologies to make cities work better–for everything from transportation and energy to healthcare and education. In fact, the crowdsourcing technology in WaterWatchers could be used to help address a wide range of problems, including traffic jams, crime and pollution.

It all starts with awareness of the possibilities. WaterWatch engages citizens and government leaders alike. Once people understand problems and feel empowered to address them, society can make progress. I look forward to the day when all of my fellow South Africans enjoy easy access to fresh water.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Johannesburg, South Africa, Tshwane

Jack Kardys, Director of Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces

By Jack Kardys

Miami-Dade County Parks is the third largest county park system in the United States, consisting of 260 parks and 12,825 acres of land. It is made up of 17 miles of beaches, the renowned Zoo Miami, golf courses, marinas, large athletic stadiums, campgrounds, pools and more.

As Miami-Dade County looks at new ways to re-vitalize the region, create jobs and spur business growth while benefiting residents, the parks system is at the epicenter. In  addition to making sure we’re good stewards of the environment, we are committed to ensuring social equity with the right distribution of park facilities and programs throughout the community for people of all ages, sizes, shapes, and income levels.

Most of the parks in Miami-Dade County are anywhere from 50 to 75 years-old. Our beachfront parks were built in the 1930’s and 1940’s and the saltwater intrusion has been wreaking havoc on the system ever since. Our community pools were built in the 1960’s and the early 1970’s. The pipe corrosion from chlorine and the chemicals we use to keep those in balance tear up our pipes. It’s a challenge we face throughout the region.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Though the infrastructure is aging, we’re looking at innovation in a meaningful way to help save on costs and redirect those savings to benefit residents and to spur economic growth.

Today, the Miami-Dade County Parks department pumps about 360 million gallons a year throughout our system at a cost of about $5 million. It’s a combined water and sewer system, so what comes out of the faucet gets charged going back into a sewer system as well. We know that we have leaky pipes and other problems, but it’s a significant expenditure and a very labor-intensive undertaking to go out and try to diagnose these problems.

By using IBM’s Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), we’re now able to monitor and flag any irregularities in our water usage, which are significant time and cost savings. We have sensors and intelligent meters that can basically talk to our computers in a central location. If we see any spikes or other changes within a very short period of time, within hours, we know immediately. The smart sensors alert our system and each of the park managers receives this alert through their smart devices, laptops or on their computers in their offices. They can respond in near real-time to get the problem fixed. As a result, we’re saving literally months in detecting and reacting to repairs that are needed.

When fully deployed, we anticipate we’ll save the county an estimated $1 million a year using IBM’s IOC water module. And we plan to reinvest this savings into other key areas that will benefit residents. For example, the savings may be used for heating pools to expand the Learn-to-Swim programs, acquiring more land for local parks, adding playgrounds where needed, building additional boat ramps for access to the bay or even re-lamping ball fields and walking paths with high-efficiency lighting that can generate further savings.

In a partnership with the Miami-Dade County transit department, we’re expanding the use of IBM’s technology from internal operations to include a business and citizen engagement model to be piloted in the Brickell business district. Taking a ‘MobileFirst’ approach using IBM Worklight, the enhancement will expand the transit department’s existing mobile  application to include parks, recreation and open spaces outreach and special event opportunities while promoting transit ridership. The new ‘Hop on Miami’ mobile application will alert residents to special events in the downtown area, spurring economic vitality. Restaurants and merchants will be able to send out coupons and special offers to residents who opt-in to provide businesses a new way to engage with their customers.

The collaboration of working with other departments and especially working within the divisions of our own departments has been greatly enhanced as a result of advanced technology. By integrating the parks systems with the transit department and business community, we’ll make places like the Brickell business area really hop.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, IBM Intelligent Operations Center, IBM Smarter Planet, Miami-Dade County, Smarter Cities, smarter government, Smarter Water

Angel Petisco, CIO, Miami-Dade County

By Angel Petisco

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, Big Data analytics, IBM Smarter Planet, Miami-Dade County, Smarter Cities, Smarter Transportation

Nearly four years into the Smarter Planet journey, IBMers have undertaken more than 2,000 engagements with governments and businesses aimed helping them use cutting-edge technologies to make their systems for getting things done work better. These encounters are all over the map, geographically and figuratively. But important lessons are being learned. And, in particular, one interesting pattern is emerging. For organizations of all types, good outcomes depend on addressing the yin and yang of building a smarter planet: a combination of improvisation and preparedness–or long term planning.

Improvisation: In the realm of smarter planet problems and solutions, there’s so much variability that no single blueprint will fit every overtly similar situation. Organizations have to be flexible and creative to get stuff done. They can’t let the need for a master plan or budget-tightening pressures paralyze them.

Preparedness: While creative fixes can help city leaders manage their systems for the short-term, the longer-term vitality of cities, countries and organizations depends on leaders adopting a mission and a strategy for achieving it. But even that’s not enough. They have to anticipate the challenges to come–everything from next year’s big storm to the impacts of climate change to the next big financial shock–and build resilient systems capable of withstanding them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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A good example of improvisation comes from Nairobi, Kenya. Throughout the world, many cities are starting to roll out vast networks of video cameras trained on highways and intersections. The  goal is to use video images to provide up-to-the-minute reads on traffic conditions–so local authorities can manage traffic better by changing traffic signals, rerouting, or sending police or public works employees to address problems as they emerge. In Nairobi, rather than wait for an extensive deployment of its own video cameras, the city made a deal with a local Internet service provider that had installed some cameras so it could show live traffic situations on its Web portal. They have plans to buy and deploy their own network of cameras. “But, in the mean time, they’re working in partnership with a private company. They’re making do,” says Wendy Lung, the director of corporate strategy for IBM Venture Capital Group.

Lung was one of six IBM executives who recently spent three weeks in Nairobi working with local authorities to help them come up with a plan for modernizing the transportation system. They’re participating in IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge as members of the Executive Service Corps, a free, volunteer effort modeled on the US Peace Corps that’s aimed at providing expert advice to cities around the world while helping IBM train leaders capable of dealing with the cultural, political and financial challenges inherent in doing business globally.

The Nairobi leaders didn’t see their arrangement with the ISP as the long term solution, but it’s a practically approach to problem solving that works and helps them get stuff done. And it raises the question: What other creative approaches could the Kenyan government leaders take to accomplish their goals? Lung and her colleagues had creative problem solving in mind when they made recommendations at the end of their engagement in Nairobi. One of them: That a wide variety of government agencies in Kenya–and, indeed, across East Africa–would to well to share a single cloud computing set up for handling many of their transportation-management needs. This would make it easier to share information between government agencies, and they’d save money, as well.

But while Nairobi’s short-term approach to getting access to traffic video was smart, inspired improvisation only goes so far. Consider last year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami. It’s impossible to respond adequately to a disaster of that magnitude. So it’s vital to take the long view, anticipate potential problems, and build systems capable of avoiding them or diminishing their impact.

This approach depends to a great extent on honesty and transparency. Organizations and societies have to be willing to confront their vulnerabilities and make the policy changes and financial investments necessary for dealing with them.

Colin Harrison, an IBM Smarter Cities technical strategist, has traveled to Japan repeatedly since the quake to help out with recovery and preparedness. A surprise discovery in the aftermath, he believes, teaches us a great deal about the importance of facing our societal demons head on.

The Japanese coastline has cliffs some 60-80 meters high that are pierced by rivers draining the inland plain. These rivers have carved narrow valleys ending in bays. There are many small fishing villages along this coast. When the tsunami struck, the wall of water entered the bays and the steep valley walls acted like funnels—so the flood surged high and devastated the fishing villages. In the aftermath of the quake,  people discovered long-forgotten, centuries-old stone markers in these valleys that are inscribed with warnings not to build houses below the level of the markers. Japanese ancestors knew of the risks of major tsunamis, but over the centuries their descendants forgot or decided to take the risk.

Harrison’s takeaway: “Prepare for the next disasters by making societies more resilient—because disasters will surely come.” One of the core principles for achieving resilience is to create diversity within systems. That way, if one element fails, others can succeed and help balance out the losses. The Internet is designed based on that principle. In the district east of the Japanese city of Sendai, which was devastated by the quake and tsunami, the people living there had become critically dependent on one form of economic activity, farming. When the disaster struck, their entire economy was destroyed, since the salt water has made their land infertile for decades to come. IBM is now working with universities and farmers to establish new approaches to agriculture, such as hydroponic farming.

Resilience has become a major theme for IBM researchers in Japan, the United States, Australia and elsewhere. Much of this work is being done in collaboration with governments and universities. But there’s a private sector angle, as well. A group of major corporations has become so concerned about the resilience of societies and industrial infrastructure that they have formed a loose confederation, called the Resilience Action Initiative, to proactively address issues arising over the next decades due to the combination of population growth and resource constraints.

It’s early days for the initiative, but IBM has begun gathering information and experiences that can help build a new methodology for creating resilience. In fact, it treats some of the Executive Services Corps engagements as”scouting parties” to help shape their thinking, says Harrison.

Which takes us back to the yin and yang of the smarter planet. In a time with so many economic, political and social conflicts in play, the push and pull between improvisation and preparedness is shaping up to be one of the important dialectical relationships of the 21st Century–and one that won’t be easy to work out.

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Read a white paper about IBM’s commitment to Africa.

Here’s a white paper about IBM’s Transportation Maturity Model.

Here’s a study by UN-HABITAT about Nairobi’s economic prospects.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Japan, Kenya, Nairobi, Resilience Action Initiative

Cahill

Across North America, drought-stricken farmers are facing historically small harvests, raising concerns about global shortages and increasing food prices. This summer’s drought should be a strong reminder that we have to manage our water resources more carefully.

In many countries, the competition for water between the countryside and cities is intensifying.  Farmers  face an uphill battle in the competition for water since industry can afford to pay much more than they can, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

This battle over water is likely to intensify. As the world’s levels of CO2 emissions continue to rise, the frequency of extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves is expected to intensify. Heat waves are expected to further strain the world’s water resources, especially in areas where water demand is increasing and water supplies are shrinking. The challenge worldwide is to meet today’s water needs while putting in place innovative strategies to address future requirements.

One of the best ways to promote sustainability is to make consumers aware of the true cost of water.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What we pay to the water company each month only reflects the price to bring clean water to our taps. It does not reflect the value of the resource in each of its various uses. Water management, resource expansion, environmental protection and infrastructure maintenance are expensive, and much of the cost is redistributed through state and federal taxes, as well as local and regional bond measures, according to the American Water Resources Association.

Transparency about the real cost of water should be a fundamental principle, irrespective of the source of funds that underwrite the supply.

Sullivan

For example, as a nation, we must begin to treat water as we would any other scarce resource and learn to live within our means. This requires efficiency and planning for sustainable use in the face of increasing demands for water, particularly in agriculture, industry and power production. Concern over the intensive use of groundwater, deterioration of surface waters, and various state and federal nutrient and water management regulations, are making us reexamine the efficiency of water and nutrient management strategies.

A study by University of California at Davis scientists shows that plants only use half the nitrogen fertilizer that farmers apply. The other half travels down through the soil, eventually making its way into local drinking water supplies where nitrate contamination can make the water unfit for drinking.

It’s a serious problem that’s getting worse.

Research shows that coupling the use of soil moisture measurement technology with irrigation controls can reduce water application and nutrient runoff by 50 percent – and those efficiencies also mean reduced energy use because less water is pumped overall.

Furthermore, increasing drought and aridity around the world, linked to climate change and land degradation, are becoming a major threat to food security and poverty reduction efforts, according to the United Nations.  Since 1950, 1.9 billion hectares (4.7 billion acres) of land around the world has become degraded, a problem that has reduced harvests, contributed to changing rainfall patterns and increased the vulnerability of millions of people. Each year, on average, another 12 million hectares (30 million acres) of land a year is lost to the problem.

Applying analytic insight can assess drought conditions, communicate threats and trigger actions in a systematic and efficient manner as drought conditions intensify. Although progress is being made, much more work is required to develop effective systems across the globe and to provide information at a scale that is meaningful for drought planning at the local level by water managers and other decision makers.

Extreme events – such as the extreme floods and droughts around the world in recent years – often provide stimulus for action. They provide the opening for change to take place.

Technorati Tags: IBM, UgMo

One of their biggest headaches is infrastructure–their roads, bridges, sidewalks, water lines and sewer pipes. They used to fix things when they broke. These days, increasingly, the forward-thinkers among them aim to fix things before they have a chance to break. And they’re using technology to help them optimize the way they invest in infrastructure maintenance and renewal.

Cambridge, a small city in Ontario, Canada, is in the vanguard of getting this right. It has been working with IBM Research to develop a system for prioritizing the city’s investments in fixing or replacing physical infrastructure so they meet the public’s needs while making the most of their limited budget. “We look at how we can use technology and revised business practices to make the city work better,” says Mike Hausser, Cambridge’s director of asset management and support services.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Canadians got their wake up call about crumbling infrastructure a few years ago when a series of mishaps and mistakes led to the contamination of the water supply in tiny Walkerton, Ontario, by E. coli bacteria. Half of the city’s population of 5,000 became ill and seven people died. That incident and others led to development of Federal and Provincial regulations regarding asset management. Campbridge, in anticipation of those regulations, pro-actively created an Asset Management Division to comply with regulations and to better understand and manage its infrastructure debt and deficit. A few years later, after IBM announced its Smarter Planet agenda, the two organizations began working together on a capital investment management system that’s being tested in the city today.

The system, called PALM (for Planning Analytics for Asset Lifecycle Management), is integrated with Cambridge’s pre-existing asset management and logistics systems. Working together, the systems help managers answer a series of key questions: What do I need to do? How should I do it? What funding will support it? And how should I optimize my activities so I get the maximum return on investment?

The IBM Research team that designed PALM had just completed a major technology project in a similar vein for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Dept. They conducted a series of meetings with Cambridge leaders in mid-2011 and then agreed to collaborate on a so-called First of a Kind (FOAK) project. “I’m a math guy sitting with a guy who has 30 years of experience in fixing roads and water pipes. He knows a whole lot more about that stuff than I do,” recalls Tarun Kumar, the researcher who heads the IBM team. “We didn’t have a lot in common on the surface, but we came up with something that’s unique–a common innovation agenda.”

The infrastructure investment project was high on Cambridge’s priority list. That’s because it’s facing a ticking infrastructure time bomb in the coming decades. The city of 135,000 went through growth spurts in the 1950s, the 1970s and the 1980s. In each case, new roads and water and sewer pipes were installed. Since then, the city has invested in basic maintenance, but it hasn’t yet taken on the more challenging task of replacing large chunks of infrastructure (road, water, and sewers) before they fail.  And some of them are beginning to fail now.

For example, in the 1960s the city installed thin-wall cast iron water main pipes made from new metal alloys that were designed to save money and materials. Unfortunately, about half of the pipes are starting to break down–decades ahead of their original life expectancy.

When a city starts contemplating digging up a lot of water mains, it has to take into consideration the other stuff that’s nearby–including roads, sidewalk and sewer lines. This is where the analytics comes in. The IBMers gathered millions of discreet pieces of information about the city’s 250,000 critical transportation and public works assets drawn from the records of multiple city departments. That’s a lot of data to manage, but, adding to the complexity of the challenge, some vital information is missing. The city has only 10 years of asset management information, and, in many cases, it doesn’t know the condition of the pipes buried deep underground in specific locations.

The IBM Research team developed technology that is now enabling Cambridge’s leaders to make strategic and operational decisions. The researchers developed algorithms to predict which assets will fail and when. Those predictions feed into a needs-assessment engine that helps city planners to identify the options they should consider. Should a water pipe be relined or replaced? Should a road be repaved with a thin overlay or should it be reground and resurfaced? Each option comes with a cost-benefit analysis. In addition, the technology allows planners to consider other factors, including the effect that one repair would have on other nearby infrastructure. That way, the city managers hope to avoid situations like having to dig up a road to replace water pipes just a new months after the road has been repaved. Better to wait to repave after the digging is done.

The prescription options are then fed to an investment planning tool that helps planners choose the best funding sources for each project. The analysis tool considers factors such as criticality, risk and funding constraints. When planners put forth their investment proposals to elected officials, they can back them up with solid facts and rationales.

This kind of technology has potential not only in cities but in any industry that buys a lot of equipment and maintains a large physical infrastructure. Think oil and gas exploration and distribution companies, and electric utilities. They all need to better  manage the stuff they own. “Companies need to listen to their assets so they can figure out what they need to do,” says Kumar.

Listen to your assets. That has a nice ring to it. In the era of big data, you can bet we’ll be doing a lot of listening.

Technorati Tags: Cambridge, IBM

Today, as a scientist with IBM Research, Vortman’s job is to come up with breakthroughs that enable water utilities to conserve water and money, while at the same time providing the water that consumers want and need. She leads a team at IBM Research – Haifa that designed a new system for monitoring and managing water pressure that could provide a model for many cities and communities seeking to deal with tight water supplies and growing demands. IBM has put the system to work for the Sonoma Country Water Agency, which serves more than 600,000 customers in Northern California. The first pilot is being done with the Valley of the Moon Water District, one of the distributors of the agency’s water. “We found that if we can manage the pressure in a flexible way, everybody can benefit,” says Vortman.

IBM has been working with the water agency for several years to help it improve efficiency and balance the needs of consumers and the natural environment.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The latest work with the agency, which is led by IBM Research – Haifa, is aimed at addressing a conundrum in water management: how do you keep pressure at the right level for users without worsening leaks and wearing out equipment? The answer, according to Vortman, is that water utilities have to view their systems holistically and manage them more precisely. They must view the water system as a complex entity and come up with a way of optimizing it to produce the most efficient and effective results–just like you optimize a transportation system, an electrical grid or a company’s supply chain.

In the past, Sonoma kept the pressure high on the entire water-delivery system so it wouldn’t get complaints from customers. But that put a lot of stress on their equipment. Vortman and her team tapped data analytics to help address the problem. Using the agency’s existing pressure and flow meters, they have mapped the system and created a statistical model integrated with hydraulic simulation that they use to simulate what happens when pressure is increased or decreased in specific areas. Using the simulations as a guide, the agency’s engineers manually adjust pumps and valves spread throughout the county.

The system was installed in October, and, already, Vortman says, it has helped improve the agency’s efficiency. The agency avoided massive pressure spikes, which happened before, to deal with localized pressure deficiencies. Vortman and her team are now working on refinements that will make it easier for the agency to spot the location of leaks in pipes and other equipment so they can be fixed quickly and affordably.

For Vortman, better water management is more than just a job; it’s a quest. “Every country has to come up with new ways of dealing with water. Analytics can help,” she says.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Sonoma County Water Agency

By Peter Williams

CTO, IBM Big Green Innovations

During the past year, we’ve seen extreme weather conditions, from crippling drought in many parts of the United States and Europe to floods in Italy, Thailand, China and more. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change may increase the probability of some ordinary weather events reaching extreme levels or of some extreme events becoming more extreme – so in essence, we can expect a continued rise in extreme weather condition and events.

Even without climate change, floods are not rare; in fact, they are the most common natural disaster in the United States. Although we typically have some advance warning of their arrival, thanks to satellite forecasts, there is always the possibility (and likelihood) that a flash flood will behave in unpredictable ways, causing untold damage. To add insult to injury, dry, desert lands are often the hardest hit by floods, in areas where water is the most precious.

Clearly, we can’t fight the weather. Floods and droughts are a fact of life. We can, however, better predict how they affect us and protect ourselves from harm. Most flood modeling systems look at the main stems of large rivers. These forecasts provide valuable information, but often times the real action is in the thousands of small river branches and the tributary networks where flooding actually starts.

The computing power required to forecast the behavior of tens of thousands of river branches was simply not available in past decades. Today, using new flood prediction technology, we can predict the behavior of millions of river branches simultaneously. IBM and the University of Texas are using this modeling technology to predict the behavior of the 230 mile-long Guadalupe River and more than 9,000 miles of tributary networks in Texas. In only one hour, the system can generate models for up to 100 hours of river behavior.

Armed with this sort of knowledge before floods strike, cities and counties can draw up better response or preventive plans. And that kind of information can also be linked to other data regarding the structural condition of levees, so that targeted evacuation orders could be issued if necessary.

The value of technology in water management isn’t limited to cities — there are clear applications for data analytics in agriculture as well.

Although agriculture is an inherently risky business due to unpredictable weather patterns, farmers can minimize the risk with data analytics. In fact, many are already doing so.  Looking at historical weather, crop yield and irrigation data, they can design their activities to take advantage of natural weather patterns and have a better understanding of the exact amount of water each type of crop needs. Sun World, a California fruit grower, has used data analytics to reduce fuel and water consumption, as well as labor costs. By analyzing financial data and increasing the use of drip irrigation systems, the company cut water use by 9% over four years’ time. A redesign of grape trellises – which didn’t require workers to bend over to pick the fruit — increased productivity and reduced physical injuries and the number of pickers needed at harvest time.  This kind of “precision agriculture” can save water (and thus energy), improve crop yield (more crops with less water), and reduce runoff.

As one Pennsylvania farmer told the Altoona Mirror, “[Farmers] are big risk takers and weather’s a big risk we just have to deal with every year.”  But with the help of data analytics and flood modeling systems, weather doesn’t have to be a force to contend with or a challenge to overcome — it can be an energy source harnessed for good.

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