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WIPAC MONTHLY The Monthly Update from Water Industry Process Automation & Control

www.wipac.org.uk Issue 2/2016 - February 2016

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In this Issue

Editorial.............................................................................................................................. 3

Industry News..................................................................................................................... 4 - 9

Highlights of the news of the month from the global water industry centred around the successes of a few of the

companies in the global market.

Interconnected assets could reap the reward for utilities................................................... 10-11

The Internet of Things (IoT) has a huge potential on a global basis and no more so in the UK with the opening up of the

retail market. In this article by Laurie Reynolds of Aquamatix, he explains the potential rewards for the Water Industry and

discusses the work of the Hypercat Consortium

How can instrumentation help deliver the factory approach in the Water Industry............. 12-14

It has been six years since STOWA, the Dutch research agency, produced their report on the factory approach to the

Water Industry. In this article the role of instrumentation is looked at in the water industry with particular reference to

resource consumption and production in wastewater.

Getting data quality wrong and how to get it right............................................................... 15-17

The quality of the data that the industry collects has been a long standing problem. In this article by Oliver Grievson the

consequences of getting data wrong and the chief causes of the problems are discussed together with an approach of how

to get the data quality right

Workshops, Conferences & Seminars................................................................................... 18-20

The highlights of the conferences and workshops in the coming months

WIPAC Monthly is a publication of the Water Industry Process Automation & Control Group. It is produced by the group

manager and WIPAC Monthly Editor, Oliver Grievson. This is a free publication for the benefit of the Water Industry and please

feel free to distribute to any who you may feel benefit.

All enquires about WIPAC Monthly, including those who want to publish news or articles within these pages, should be directed

to the publications editor, Oliver Grievson

The photograph on the cover page shows the recent UK tour of Vega’s mobile training centre.

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From the Editor

We need to know what we want.....that was how I started a presentation to the CIWEM Urban Drainage Group this month. It was not one of my better presentations but the sentiment was there. This month has been very much the

start of quite a few Water Networks conversations that are going to take place over the next few months. At least on the wastewater side of things, truth be told, we don’t know what we want. In the same conference day I saw one of the UK Utilities present their proof of concept that they have done which was very much along the lines of what had been done by another company. I was amazed to hear though towards the end of the presentation that although they’d done the proof of concept that the benefits were still kind of unknown. From this I took the fact that intelligence and active system control is potentially a significant work in progress. Quite simply we don’t know what we want even when we have it.....

On the potable water network side of things we seem to be much further ahead and there is much more knoweldge of what we actually want and things are quite clearly developing and a sense of direction is appearing, at least from the presentations that I saw at the CIWEM Smart Water Networks workshop. The session on the story of leakage from the potable water network was kicked off by Andrew Donnelly of the Portuguese Water Company EPAL. Now Andrew is somewhat dismissive of the whole concept of “Smart Water Networks” as he’s very down to earth and presents things as

very much the right and proper way of doing things from both a management and engineering perspective, doing the basics right and at the end of the day he is of course 100% correct in what he says. The proof is in the pudding and he has not only reduced the Water Leakage to around 8% in a country where the norm is 40% , he has not only sustained these savings but he is actually going out to help and support others to do it within their regions too. And I thought my admiration couldn’t raise anymore.

This is an attitude that you find in key pockets of the Water Industry....it was a philosophy that I found at the Urban Drainage Group a few days earlier and is a philosophy of the technical people within the industry and with the reported worrying levels of industry skills it is the only way that the industry is going to survive and work efficiently. The skill level is something that I honestly see as a problem in the industry and no more so at the very basics of instrumentation. I was sent this month a photograph of a flow measurement structure with the underlying comment of “the ICA person couldn’t figure out what was wrong.” I fell off my chair, either laughing at the installation or crying about the lack of knowledge. It was a case of, looking at the photograph, difficult to tell what was right.

These are of course isolated incidents but based upon the industry getting the absolute basics wrong how on earth can we hope to build upon these things. How on earth can we hope to construct “Smart Networks,” whether they be on the potable or wastewater side of things when the data that we construct them around has the potential to be so far from measuring the truth that it makes the whole concept redundant.

So what are the positives? 2,000 AMI based Smart Meters a day are being installed by Thames Water with data being recorded on an hourly basis and transmit-ted on a daily basis. All future-proofed to record on a 15 minute basis but limited due to the need to preserve battery life. A target of 75% meter penetration by 2030 and a desire to get to universal metering once technical issues are resolved. A sensible solution with the forethought that the amount of data that is going to be collected is astronomical but a company that is already planning for the future. Good fundamental at basic work that needs to be done but not rushing onwards at a rate which makes things impossible to deliver and ensure that things are done properly. The plan is 14 years long which seems insanely long but for projects such as this make perfect sense.

So to come to the statement......”We need to know what we want,” there are certainly some within the water industry who know what they want. To me it a yes to Smart Meters, it is a yes to using the data to work with the customers, it is a yes to control of the potable network and it is a yes to taking the wastewa-ter system and applying similar sort of principles with the wastewater characteristic and following on from our potable water colleagues. But most of all it is having the time to deliver all of this is a controlled manner so that the basics of the industry, the technical engineering can be done properly so that we have a long term workable industry.

Have a good month

Oliver

Anglian Water ask industry to “Keep the Water Flowing with Big Water Challenge

The Water Innovation Network – a partnership between Anglian Water and Opportunity Peterborough – is launching a major new business innovation competition for the water industry.

Launching the competition, Anglian said the two month long Big Water Challenge 2016 will see companies working out ground-breaking solutions to one of the industry’s thorniest problems. The theme for the inaugural challenge is ‘Keep the Water Flowing’ and will focus on ways Anglian Water can maintain supplies to customers’ homes and restore water after a burst pipe as quickly as possible.

Participating companies will be invited to an event in Peterborough on May 6th for a background briefing on the issue where they will get to quiz experts, explore the difficulties of dealing with supply interruptions and get to grips with the challenge.

They will then have six weeks to refine and submit their ideas which will in turn be whittled down to a final shortlist of firms who will get the chance to pitch to a panel of senior Anglian Water staff. The winning idea will get financial and technical support from the company to make their idea a reality.

Experts attending the event will include members of staff from Anglian Water teams dealing with restoration of water supply and supply interruptions. They will be joined by representatives from the Anglian’s AMP6 Tier 1 Integrated Maintenance and Repair Alliance companies, which includes Clancy Docwra, Claret Civil Engineering and Kier MG. Anglian Water and its alliance companies are committed to working collaboratively to tackle significant challenges over the coming years and ensure water networks in the region run optimally.

Information about interruption and restoration to supply will be emailed from the 1st March to those signed up with all the info needed to start developing their idea. For more details and to register for the event click here

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Industry News

Nivus wins first Thames Water Contract

UK Instrumentation Training Tour a big success

The recent UK Tour of Vega’s mobile instrumentation training session has been recently hailed as a resounding success by all of those who have visited it so far.

The mobile training centre has spent the month of March touring the UK visiting locations from Aberdeen and Grangemouth in Scotland to Liverpool, Hull & Grimsby in the North of England to Derby, Coventry & Peterborough in the Midlands.

The tours have demonstrated the applications of different types of instrumentation in a variety of different industries that the company serves in the UK and visitors have been treat-ed to training sessions in radar level measurement, pressure measurement & nuecleonic detection.

The Vega Truck will finish its UK tour on 4th March in Burgess Hill where Vega are based after which it will return to Germany

The Leamington based company with its German headquarters will be supplying ultrasonic as well as radar flow measurement systems to Thames Water´s sewage treatment and channel networks. The multi-million value framework offers many possibilities to co-op and to gain synergies on both sides.

“We are both proud and pleased to win this framework for the first time“ says Marcus Fischer, Managing Director of NIVUS GmbH & NIVUS Ltd. It underscores the ambition of the flow measurement supplier for their state of the art system solutions. For example there are high accurate flow systems detecting real-time flow profiles even under difficult hydraulic conditions.

David Miles, Thames Business Manager and Environmental Manager with NIVUS UK “I look forward to the cooperation. The NIVUS flow measurement prod-ucts bring a complement and consequent addition for Thames Water to their previous flow measuring systems in use.” NIVUS adds new flow measurement systems with easy and quick assembly for pipe systems and also for open channel measurement.

Especially for bigger pipes their pipe sensor solutions offer additional advantages in terms of cost and sustainability. Listening to market needs NIVUS identi-fied the potential for a greener, more cost effective and removable flow measurement device for full and partially full pipes that can match the accuracy and applications of conventional flow measurement systems but at a fraction of the cost.

“NIVUS is especially characterized by the wide-ranging product portfolio of flow measurement sensors. With a quick assembly and low material needs NIVUS products are a cost-effective and eco-friendly alternative to other measurement methods“, says Alison Southwood, Innovation Manager. “On the basis of our large product portfolio NIVUS is able offer optimum flow solution for almost every application.”

Smart systems complement the NIVUS flow measurement range needed especially in times where IoT is not only a buzz-word. The smart data logger and transmitter are able to provide data even without mains power supply. To enhance the flow solutions the manufacturer offers web based data portals as well as a scalable SCADA system for automated multi-site control and overview.

SWAN release version 2 of their SMART Infrastructure toolFollowing the release of the first version of the Smart Water Networks Forum (SWAN Forum) smart infrastructure tool in October 2014 a new improved version has been released this month and for the first time it is available to anyone who registers.

The original tool enabled users to search for specific solutions, map existing tech-nologies to particular network challenges, and view interactive architecture maps, benefit analyses and case studies. The Tool was developed by SWAN’s Architecture Workgroup and is the result of a year-long, cross-industry effort. The Tool is designed to allow all industry players interested in the smart water space - water utilities, tech-nology providers, academics, consultants and investors – to have a single repository with in-depth expert knowledge to better understand smart water technologies, in-cluding the many-to-many connections inherent in a smart water architecture.

The original tool covered five solution areas: Water Quality Monitoring, Energy Man-agement, Pressure Management, Leak Detection, and Water Network Management. For each solution, there was a layered architecture map, an overall solution descrip-tion, and the ability to drill down on individual technology components. Users may also view solution benefit analyses and insightful case studies demonstrating how a utility deployed a specific smart water technology.

The new release expands on the original tool including a greater repository of case studies & user testimonials as well as a new social forum and sections on

• Operation Expenditure• Capital Expenditure• Regulation• Supply Constraints• Customer Service• Revenue• Weather & Climate Change

SWAN - The Smart Water Networks Forum, is a worldwide industry forum promoting the use of data technologies in water networks, making them smarter, more efficient and more sustainable. SWAN members vary from water utilities, technology providers, engineering and consulting firms, academics, and investors. By aligning industry leaders and par-ticipants, SWAN has the unique ability to share its members’ diverse experience, develop its own research, and help shape industry standards.

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SE Water buys 1200 loggers to tackle leaksSouth East Water has invested in over a thousand acoustic loggers which will boost its efforts to detect leaks in its water network.

The £133,000 investment has seen the utility acquire 200 correlating loggers which will be installed underground in town centres, and 1000 ‘lift and shift’ noise loggers which can be moved to different locations in the pipe network.

The correlating loggers become active between 2am and 4am when there is little activity in the network or noise from the street above. They listen to any sound coming from the pipes and transmit data back to the office for analysis.

These new more sensitive and accurate correlating loggers have replaced the basic ones used for many years and which have only given the leak information in numerical form.

The additional information will help South East Water’s team easily zero in on leaks so they can set about repairing them before they cause any major problems in the water network.

Gary Ford, Leakage Detection Manager at South East Water, said: “We care about finding and fixing leaks as quickly as possible, but with most hidden underground and out of sight we need to use specialist technology like these loggers and correlators to track them down before we can repair the pipe.”

South East Water spends about £13M annually finding and fixing leaks, with its specially trained leakage team running a 24-hour operation.

Gary continued: “These loggers and correlators are just two pieces of state-of-the-art technology in our armoury used in our ongoing battle to plug leaks.

“I often get asked why we can’t stop leaks happening altogether, but the only way to guarantee our pipes won’t ever leak is to stop the water running through them. As we all know, this is not an option.”

Honeywell addresses Industrial Internet Of Things Information Distribution Challenge

Water level sensing technology from OTT Hydrometry is being used in an intelligent flood warning system that has been installed at a ford in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. The system, which was designed and installed by SWARCO Traffic, monitors water level in the Finham Brook where it passes under the A452, and warns drivers when potentially dangerous conditions arise.

Working closely with Warwickshire County Council (WCC), SWARCO provided a set of four signs on the approach and in close proximity to the ford. The two signs that are closest to the ford initially warn of water on the car-riageway (up to 100mm); these alert drivers to the flood and the risk of aquaplaning. When the water rises above 100mm the two outer signs are activated to enable drivers to take an alternative route, and the inner signs provide an additional message that the ford is impassable.

David Matthewson, team leader of the Traffic Control and Information Systems team at WCC, says: “This ford can be the cause of significant traffic problems during flood conditions; partly because drivers are unsure whether the road is passable and also because smaller cars can get into trouble when a passing larger car causes a wave.

“The two trigger levels were based on potential risk to motorists and although these can be adjusted locally onsite, we initially erred on the side of caution at commissioning. Following three periods of flood since late December 2015 we have slightly adjusted the trigger levels to reflect the depth of water on the carriageway during a flood.”

The water level sensor is an OTT PLS (Pressure Level Sensor) located in a slotted stilling well. Designed for field applications, the robust PLS has a stainless steel housing, an integrated controller and a ceramic pressure-measuring cell. The sensor has an analogue output that can be adjusted onsite. The SWARCO system uses a UTMC interface to communicate with Warwickshire’s existing UTMC Common Database which in turn sends commands to the low energy/high visibility LED signs.

SWARCO has also worked with OTT Hydrometry on a similar system in Warrington. “This is a new solution to an old problem,” says Derek Williamson, Head of Sales for SWARCO Traffic. “We have used our expertise in traffic management technology to design a bespoke system that had previously been used to warn of high winds on viaducts and traffic queues, and adapted the concept to develop an intelligent system providing warnings for dangerous water levels.”

Intelligent monitoring system provides flood warnings

OTT Hydrometry manufactures products that enable water professionals to monitor the planet’s most precious resource. Through the delivery of accurate reliable data, OTT’s instruments and services provide essential tools to help protect the environment.

Completely focused on hydro-meteorology and water quality, OTT products have been market leaders for over 140 years and coupled with modern communications technology provide remote access to continuous monitoring data.

Honeywell has launched a new app providing plant managers immediate notifications as well as real-time plant performance data and analytics direct to their smartphones.

Honeywell Pulse™, part of Honeywell’s Industrial Internet of Things network, is the company’s newest technology enabling plant managers, supervisors and others to stay connected to their enterprise – wherever they are in the world. The app brings relevant metrics and the tools to resolve issues directly to mobile devices, helping to improve efficiency and safety.

“Honeywell’s IIoT is all about data, data analytics, and especially big data analytics,” said Bruce Calder, vice president and chief technology officer for Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS). “The IIoT, cloud and mobility have really supercharged our portfolio. Honeywell Pulse gives managers and supervisors peace of mind by allowing them to receive alerts and monitor performance remotely. This allows plant personnel to respond faster to situations, whether they are planned or unplanned.”

Honeywell is well positioned to leverage the IIoT, a network of networks that uses the Internet to connect people, processes and assets, and to enable a new way to optimize business results and improve safety through increased mobility.

Honeywell recently conducted a customer mobility strategy survey which showed 65 percent of customers in the chemicals, refining, pulp and paper, and upstream oil and gas industries have a mobility strategy. It identified the top three operational areas that generate the most interest in mobility are processing facilities, field service and logistics. The survey also revealed that customers are investing in mobility in three key areas: information visibility, improved field service workflow and safety compliance

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Moxa offers an Integrated Data Acquisition Solution to Simplify Industrial IoT

Pressure control schemes aim to reduce bursts for Anglian Water

Moxa’s newly launched ThingsPro Suite is an integrated solution for distributed data acquisition and device management that can immensely simplify your Industrial IoT deployments. Built on an open Debian Linux platform, the ThingsPro Suite enables the integration of Modbus communications and device management, data acquisition and processing, and wireless networking, in a few simple steps.

Moxa, with its experience in Industrial IoT project installations over the past few years, is aware of the challenges companies have been facing while deploying Industrial IoT solutions. According to Ryan Teng, product manager, Moxa’s Embedded Computing Division, “For an Industrial IoT application, the value is in the data. Before the data can be used however, it must be gathered from thousands of devices. This is often a drain on engineering resources. ThingsPro Suite aims to provide a simple, integrated data-acquisition and device-management solution to speed up the development of these devices, thus shorten the time-to-market.”

Featuring the Data Logger and Wireless Manager utilities, ThingsPro Suite empowers users to focus primarily on their applications instead of the complex process of integrating the field devices with the applications in the centralized control facility. ThingsPro Suite is currently available with Moxa UC-8100-CG series computers.

ThingsPro Suite Highlights:

• Ready-to-Run Data Acquisition Engine with Data-Logger Utility• Data polling engine for Modbus/RTU and Modbus/TCP• Modbus API to interface with user applications, providing greater programming flexibility• Data logging software that can interface with remote databases, easing data acquisition

Anglian Water is investing in two pressure control schemes in Bedfordshire which aim to tackle leaks and bursts and save more than one million litres of water every day.

The schemes, which will affect around 20,000 homes and businesses in Harlington and Bedford town, will drive leakage down further by managing the underground pipe network differently.

New pressure control valves will be installed at Harlington and Sharpenhoe to allow the utility to make very small changes to the network and prevent pressure building up in the pipes when fewer people are using water. There will be no noticeable change to the pressure coming from customers’ taps, but the process will protect the water mains and reduce the chance of bursts and disruption for customers.

Works starts from 15 February when Anglian Water will install the first pressure control valve on the corner of Goswell End Road and Monmouth Road, Harlington. A second valve will be installed in Sharpenhoe to complete the scheme. Together they will create a pressure managed zone covering the northern half of Harlington village. A second, separate scheme for Bedford town centre will start at the end of February.

By varying the pressure in its pipe network these innovative schemes will cut the number of bursts by a quarter, reduce other leaks by as much as 60 per cent, and in total save more than one million litres of water every day - the equivalent of 12,500 baths per day.

Andy Smith, Anglian Water’s regional manager for these innovative schemes, said: “Customers regularly say that reducing leaks and bursts is the most important thing to them. We know they are inconvenient and frustrating and that is why we’re investing £60million in our war on leakage, to drive levels down even further and keep us ahead of the rest of the industry. Achieving such ambitious targets requires us to take a new approach to managing our water network and the Bedfordshire schemes are examples of this new approach.”

“We have always worked hard to identify and respond to leaks and bursts quickly as possible, but that doesn’t prevent them happening in the first place or prevent inconvenience for customers. This scheme will.

“Customers in Harlington won’t notice any change in the water supply coming from their taps, but once the scheme is complete they will notice fewer bursts, leaks and interruptions to their water supply.”

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AMR meters score big water savings at football stadium

Scotland’s national football stadium, Hampden Park, has cut its water consumption by 35% and achieved savings of £40,000 per year following a partnership with United Utilities Scotland.

The 52,000-seater stadium appointed United Utilities Scotland as water supplier in November 2014, in one of the most high-profile transfers since the introduction of competition to the Scottish non-domestic water market in April 2008.

Looking to identify trends in the water consumed on match and non-match days, United Utilities Scotland installed automated meter reading (AMR) devices to help Scotland’s home of football track its water use against occupancy and identify any anomalies and spikes.

The loggers, which automatically collect data every 15 minutes, showed that urinals operated by automatic flushing were using water at the same frequency for 50,000 people as 200. The AMR devices also identified a leak in the pitch water irrigation system, which was adding to the ground’s water bill.

Tony McHardy, sales director at United Utilities Scotland, said: “We’ve worked closely with Hampden to deliver immediate cost savings and ongoing management of the site’s water consumption.

“The water market is entering a new period of maturity, with more organisations looking at their options. This approach with Hampden underlines our commitment to helping Scottish businesses cut their water use, understand consumption and ultimately save money.”

Peter Dallas, managing director at Hampden Park, added: “Working with United Utilities has made us smarter about water use and efficiency. In addition, we have experienced excellent customer service, with one point of contact and accurate billing. In the running of a major venue, it is reassuring to know that our water is in good hands, enabling us to concentrate on other areas of the business.”

Yorkshire Water awards £8m AMP6 telemetry contract

Yorkshire Water has awarded a contract for the supply of remote telemetry units (RTUs) and associated equipment worth an estimated £8 million.

The proposed solution to be provided under the contract, which covers the supply of telemetred devices for asset replacement and expansion, was required to be compatible with current Yorkshire Water Protocol and be able to deliver a continuous data stream direct to the water company’s regional telemetry system for alarm management.

Hampshire based firm Metasphere Ltd has been awarded the contract – the only company who bid for the work.

The telemetry specialist has supplied over 40,000 RTUs to customers, including the first single board RTU on the market. The company was one of the founder members for the development of the WITS protocol and was instrumental in developing the software.

Fujitsu wins £4.5m-plus Environment Agency flood warning contract

The Environment Agency has awarded the contract to develop its new future flood warnings system to Fujitsu Services Ltd.

Fujitsu Services Ltd. were one of three companies in the bidding for the work, which has an estimated value of around £4. 6 million.

The contract award follows on from the Agency’s review of the Floodline Warnings Direct (FWD) service which came into operation in 2006. The FWD has been used to provide flood warnings to the public, professional partners (e.g. police, local authorities) and the media via messages issued across England and Wales by telephone, mobile, fax, text, email, pager and XML. The aim is to give at least 2 hours notice of flooding, seen as vital as it gives the public, businesses and response organisations time to prepare and reduce the impact of any flooding.

The review was aimed at enabling the Environment Agency to update the service to support their new strategy for flood incident management and ensure technical and financial sustainability.

The FWD service has been used to provide flood warning cover for 4,500 operational target areas – the geospatial areas at risk of flooding – with 2,300,000 properties in England and Wales identified as at risk of river and sea flooding.

During 2012, the service was used to warn more than 950,000 properties at highest risk of river and sea flooding, while the 46,000 message sets issued during 2012 were the maximum recorded for a single year.

A total of 350 concurrent users have been making use of the FWD system. Under the review the Environment Agency was also considering the extension of the current service to other types of flooding, including surface water and reservoir inundation. Other government departments (e.g. the Cabinet Office) have also been separately investigating the use of the Common Alerting Protocol.

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Big data is a UK success story; the Science and Technology Committee publish report and note that 58,000 jobs could be created and £216bn contributed to the UK economy (2.3% of GDP) over a five-year period.

But the Committee warns that existing data is nowhere near fully exploited - companies are analysing just 12% of their data, and if ‘data-phobe’ businesses made good use of their data they could increase UK productivity by 3%. The Government can also do more to make its databases ‘open’ and to share them with businesses, and across Government departments to improve and develop new public services.

A big data revolution will need action, the Committee warn, on digital skills and infrastructure, and also on people being able to give their informed consent for how their personal data is used.

While personal data is only a small proportion of big data, given the scale and pace of data gathering and sharing, distrust arising from concerns about privacy and security is often well-founded and must be resolved by industry and Government if the full value of big data is to be realised, the Committee warn.

Nicola Blackwood MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“We are living in the data age. ‘Big Data’ is driving a revolution in the speed and extent of the data applications that are shaping all aspects of our economy and our day-to-day lives. The use of ‘big data’ is already bringing big benefits. Exploited further, big data will be transformative, unlocking new life-saving research and creating unimagined opportunities for innovation. The Government has a role in this, in sharing and opening up its own data.

But big data is also raising legitimate concerns about privacy and the way personal data is being used and sometimes re-used in ways which re-identify previ-ously anonymised data. There is often well-founded distrust about this and about privacy which must be resolved by industry and Government.

A ‘Council of Data Ethics’ should be created to explicitly address these consent and trust issues head on. And the Government must signal that it is serious about protecting people’s privacy by making the identifying of individuals by de-anonymising data a criminal offence.”

Barriers

The Committee warn that the digital skills gap is approaching crisis levels, and that this not only has economic implications but also puts the quality and security of this data at risk. ‘Big data’ skills are not being strategically addressed.

The Government should commit to a continuing substantial role in developing ‘data analytics’ skills in businesses; increasing big data skills training for staff in Government departments; and promoting more extensively the application of big data at local government level. And the Government must address the wider context of its policies on apprenticeships and immigration control which affect the availability of people with big data skills.

Data protection and consent

Businesses and governments that communicate most effectively with the public, giving the citizen greater control in their data transactions by using simple and layered ‘privacy notices’, and allowing the consumer to decide exactly how far they are willing to trust each data-holder, will gain most. If informed, freely-given consent is the bedrock of a trusting relationship between a consumer and a data-holder, then it must always be part of that deal that consent freely-given can also be freely-withdrawn.

Skills

Nicola Blackwood MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“The UK is a world leader in big data research across many disciplines and in our Tech sector. But urgent action on the digital skills crisis is needed if the country is to take full advantage of our well-placed position in this sector.”

Current UK data protections – set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 - cannot simply be left until the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation is imple-mented, the Committee argues. Two areas need to be addressed before then. The Committee urges the Government to introduce a criminal penalty for serious data protection breaches and roll out the Kitemark developed by the Information Commissioner identifying good data practice.

The Data Protection Act will have to be revised to accommodate the new EU rules, which will come into force in the next two years. The new EU regulation appears to leave it open for data to be re-used, and anonymised data potentially de-anonymised, if “legitimate interests” or “public interest” considerations are invoked. The new EU rules also rely on greater fines rather than criminal penalties to deter data protection breaches.

The Committee say that the Government should establish a ‘Council of Data Ethics’ within the Alan Turing Institute as a means of addressing the growing legal and ethical challenges associated with balancing privacy, anonymisation, security and public benefit. Establishing such a Council, with appropriate terms of reference, will provide the clarity, stability and direction which has so far been lacking from the European debate on data protection issues.

Copies of the UK government reports and more information is available at

The Big Data Dillemma (PDF Version)Details on the Big Data Dilemma enquiryScience & Technology Committee

UK Parliament’s recognition of Big Data as a UK Success Story

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Opinion:

Interconnected assets could reap rewards for utilities

With the expansion of the UK retail market in water into England and Wales in 2017, the Internet of Things offers significant benefits to utilities but, says Laurie Reynolds, managing director of AquamatiX, there are also a few challenges.

The entry of the Internet of Things (IoT) into the water sector will inevitably lead to major changes in the ways utilities manage their assets and operations. However, while the potential exists to bring significant benefits both to water utilities and their increasingly valued customers, operators must be conscious of the new risks that the IoT also brings.

IoT enables deployment of low-cost, battery-powered sensors to measure network parameters; when combined with wireless communications networks the sensors provide the ability to determine the condition and capacity of water systems in real-time, enabling them to share and exchange data via the internet and computer models of the network and treatment plants. For the water industry this would include water treatment plants, storage reservoirs, pumps, valves, monitors and much more.

Historically, the water industry has been a classic model of vertical integration. Water was treated and pumped to the customer then channelled away via the sewer network to wastewater treatment works. The arrival and uptake of IoT offers a simpler and more affordable way of integrating those systems horizontally with smart water management systems that will enable water providers to expand the range of services they can offer.

Interconnected assets

Along with legislative change and the opening up of the UK retail market, the advent of standardised, modular control systems and smarter networks will release water supply companies from their traditional role. Enabling systems and machines to talk to each other makes it easier for water providers to optimise their assets, improve their operations and reduce the cost of service to customers.

During my 30 years with Thames Water, I was responsible for control and automation standards in the utility’s engineering division and became well accustomed to the limits that the technology-of-the-day placed on operators. Protocols had been developed back in 1970s when there were no clear standards in place for secure telecommunications.

Legacy systems would typically feature proprietary protocols from just one vendor and a utility would be locked into that particular vendor for life. The incompatibility of multiple communications networks reinforced a vertically integrated, siloed way of thinking.

Since then, the IT industry has outpaced industrial controls technology. Utilities are now aiming to achieve horizontal integration, which is a great change from the way systems used to be built.

The modular nature of IoT means assets can be incrementally enhanced, rather than needing to be overhauled in a major ‘big bang’ project. This means investment can be deferred and pinpointed more precisely at those assets where most benefit can be reaped. The IoT can also enable better planning of maintenance and optimised water and energy usage.

There are massive benefits in terms of scalability and costs are much lower. Systems are more flexible and can be set up much more quickly, so there are significant efficiencies from the systems integration standpoint.

Pilot project

AquamatiX is running a pilot project with Veolia Water at Tidworth, Wiltshire, to test aspects of smart water management systems, using the AquamatiX WaterWorX IoT system, which is a cloud-hosted system for monitoring all aspects of the water and wastewater networks. WaterWorx incorporates various business processes such as workflow management, a geographic information system and asset management registers that need to be integrated with real-time plant and equipment.

The telemetry has been installed and more detailed information is already flowing, warning operators of irregularities in water flow that may anticipate potential equipment failure down the line. Stage two of the project will be to create a full-scale smart water system at Tidworth.

Security

As IoT filters through the water industry, there are concerns about its vulnerability to cyber attack, particularly over the ability of outside parties to manipulate supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Historically, many systems operated through a system of ‘security by obscurity’ and system abuse was not a concern.

Today there are many more touch-points at which water control systems can be accessed. Potential vulnerabilities not addressed by the original control protocols now have to be tackled, which requires multiple levels of encryption and authentication.

The protocol itself needs to be encrypted and any control system requires authenticated access. The system should incorporate safeguards to prevent it being taken beyond safe operational limits.

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Hypercat interoperability

The next stage in the development of a secure and interoperable IoT for utilities, industry and cities is being pursued though an initiative called Hypercat. This highly collaborative approach, which is backed by Innovate UK, already has over 800 members drawn from leading technology players, SMEs and public sector organisations.

Hypercat is addressing three key challenges of the Internet of Things, which are:

• Providing a simple means for interconnecting systems and apps provided by different parties• Identifying relevant and trustworthy data from connected devices or ‘things’• Making it easier for those things to exchange information, or talk to each other

A recent report from market analyst McKinsey indicated that solving the interoperability challenge could unlock some 40% of the US$11 trillion estimated as the future value of the IoT. The Hypercat consortium is already working on a standardised vocabulary which water engineers and computer systems can both understand and communicate with.

How quickly smart water systems will achieve take-up is uncertain; the water industry is notoriously slow to adopt innovation. However, the coming retail mar-ket in water is leading to major re-organisations within water utilities, which may speed up the process through necessity.

The next Hypercat Summit takes place in London on 20 June 2016. Free tickets are available at www.hypercatsummit.com

Laurie Reynolds is a Chartered Systems Engineer; he spent 30 years with Thames Water, the largest water utility in UK, as an automation and asset management specialist. Projects included the London Water Control Centre and Ring Main which transformed the supply of water to London from a manual intensive process with high losses and inefficiency, to a demand- driven, automated process coordinated from a state-of-the art control centre

Laurie set up Aquamatix in 2011 to complete the work he began in Thames to try to introduce reusable, modular, reusable standard software for water management. This led to a position where he recognised the potential of Internet of Things in 2012 and developed the WaterWorX platform which is Aquamatix’s flagship SaaS service.

For more information, visit www.aquamatix.co.uk or email phil.stockdale@aquamatix.co.uk

What is Hypercat?

Hypercat standard is a hypermedia catalogue format designed for exposing information about the Internet of Things assets over the web.

Hypercat is an open, lightweight JSON-based hypermedia catalogue format for exposing collections of uniform resource identifiers (URLs) for exposing information about IoT assets over the web. It is extremely simple, described by one participant as “the most that 40 companies could agree on” with a strong security model. Using HTTPS, REST and JSON, each Hypercat catalogue may expose any number of URIs, each with any number of resource description framework-like (RDF-like) triple statements about it. Hypercat allows a server to provide a set of resources to a client, each with a set of semantic annotations. Implementers are free to choose or invent any set of annotations to suit their needs. A set of best practices and tools is currently being developed

A bit more technical

HyperCat allows a server to provide a set of resources to a client, each with a set of semantic annotations. Implementers are free to choose or invent any set of annotations to suit their needs. A set of best practices and tools are currently under development. Where implementers choose similar or overlapping semantics, the possibilities for interoperability are increased.

Who runs Hypercat?

The Hypercat Consortium aims to create an inclusive one-stop shop of best practice IoT implementation through the sharing of knowledge of processes and applications. There are four categories of partners with varying levels of commitment. Partners are encouraged to understand other partners capabilities and identify opportunities for collaborative business development. The Consortium credits InnovateUK’s IoT Demonstrator Phase I Clusters as the Founding Members of Hypercat.

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Article:

How can instrumentation help deliverthe resource factory approach

in the Water Industry?

Introduction

The Water Industry is constantly being pushed to do more for less, provide a better value for money for the customer and generally make things cheaper. More and more the Water Companies are being told to be more efficient in the way that they operate their businesses and it is the core part of the business, the op-erational environment that often bears the brunt of this pressure. In 2010 the Dutch research organisation produced the Wastewater Treatment Plant of 2030 in which the factory approach was raised. We are now six years down the line and this article will look at where we are getting things right and where more development needs to be undertaken.

To come back to the principles though we have two ways of making wastewater treatment works more efficient. The first is of course to limit the amount of resource that is consumed, the second is to actually produce resources. In both of these areas instrumentation has a key role to play although in reality this is only going to be on the larger wastewater treatment works which have the potential to actually work as a “resource factory.”

Resource reduction

The most important thing on any wastewater treatment works is that “Compliance is king,” whatever happens the environmental permit must be met. In the wastewater network of course it is protect the customer first and then protect the environment. Outside of this the next most important thing is where possible reduce the cost of operation.

The problem is of course quite often where the operational costs are being spent simply aren’t known and so the standard methods of operating the treatment works are taken. The majority of money is spent on aeration of the activated sludge plant. In which case limit the aeration, put DO control in place. Often the obvious efficiencies are made without the full appreciation of the real picture and what the industry ends up with is something that is “partially optimised” but not delivering its potential full benefit.

This is of course, on the larger plants, where instrumentation, process automation & control systems will help, however this is also shutting the potentials of the wastewater network out of the picture. In reality the industry should be looking at how the different elements of the collection network and the receiving wastewater treatment works are working together. This way, as was found out last year as the result of various studies, the industry can treat to a higher standard for a lower cost. A Win-Win situation.

So in terms of the philosophy what can we do as industry, on large treatment works to reduce the amount of resource that operationally we consume:

An Intelligent Controlled Wastewater Collection Network - This may seem to contain an element of “pie in the sky” thinking but actively controlling the wastewater collection network is starting to happen within the UK. It is certainly not common but it is growing more in popularity due to the benefits it has the potential to deliver.

What the actually look like in terms of monitoring and control is simple sewer level monitoring, rain gauges and weather radar as the dynamic inputs into a op-erational predictive based catchment based model. The potential benefits, which haven’t completely been realised yet, although certainly have been thought of is that flows can be balanced within the system as far as the capacity allows to smooth peaks of flow and load that is passed onto the treatment works balanc-ing this against protection of the customers due to potential sudden inundation of a full sewer, the potential for encouraging septicity and of course protecting the environment by ensuring that levels don’t rise high enough to cause illegal discharges from overflows from the sewer environment. The side benefit that has been used in the systems that have been built is that keeping the sewer relatively full, when it can be, has limited the prevalence of infiltration.

Instrumentation is of course key to this without the level based monitoring it would be impossible to track how full the sewer is to ensure protection of both customer and environment. :Level monitors within the CSOs can also ensure there are no illegal discharges to the environment. By preventing these it can help to improve the river environment towards the elusive “good status” that is the target enabling environmental permitting the potential to stay still and not tighten to ever lower standards

An Intelligent Wastewater Treatment Works - Process Control has been within the Water Industry since the 1970s although the modern advanced process controllers started to be installed in and around 2010. They have been adopted in the UK at a handful of wastewater treatment works but not to the potential that exists. Unfortunately the benefits of these systems are not truly understood and the case studies do not fully exist to justify the expenditure in putting the control systems in place.

Although the systems that are commercially available do not fully rely on instrumentation they do rely on monitoring of the situation of what is happening on the treatment works itself. The commercially available controllers that are available include several different applications on the treatment works from simple Sludge Age as a part of nitrification control, to chemical dosing control to controllers for sludge applications. The more holistic control systems look at the state of the different element of the treatment works to assess the process state of the works and control it to achieve the best possible potential outcome. This is multivariate process control at its best and is based upon modelling of the treatment works itself.

System Modelling

In reality what this takes is that there are operational models for both the network and the wastewater treatment works, each distinctly different, but working

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together.

Even within the wastewater treatment works there is the potential to run distinct process based sections of a control system but within a wider based mul-ti-variate process based, instrument fed, control system. The concepts of doing this on a single treatment works has never happened before, certainly in the UK and perhaps not around the world. The fact of bringing a model based network control system together with a plant based control system is something that is pretty much unheard of within the global water industry.

Instrumentation is of course central to this

Resource Production

The production of resources on wastewater treatment works is something that the industry has been doing for the best part of twenty years now, ever since the ban of dumping sewage sludge at sea. Energy production using anaerobic digestion and the subsequent generation of energy is reaching heights where wastewater treatment works are truly becoming energy factories. However in order to this a relatively tight control of the sludge quality is needed. This turns the sludge treatment facility into what should be an efficient factory.

In reality it is not always like this and the water industry is, sometimes, one of the few production industries to fail to measure the product that they are producing in terms of (a) energy and (b) the biosolids product that is produced. In general though.

However the UK Water & Sewerage Companies did have targets to generate a total of 965 GWh of electricity by 2015 as stated in the final business plan for the period from 2010-15.

Water Company Target (GWh)Anglian Water 87

Dwr Cymru (Welsh Water) 46

Northumbrian Water 71

Severn Trent Water 180

South West Water 10

Southern Water 64

Thames Water 288

United Utilities 125

Wessex Water 51

Yorkshire Water 43

Total 965 Case studies of where the water industry have driven towards both resource reduction and resource production by using a systematic approach are few and far between and the detail tends to be lacking. The most recent was the press announcement from Denmark that a treatment works would be, for the first time, net positive in the energy that it uses.

A water treatment plant in Denmark will become the first in the world to produce 50% more electricity than it uses, according to a press release.

According to the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food, the Egå Renseanlæg treatment plant near Aarhus is undergoing a total renovation to install new technol-ogy that will transform the facility into an energy producer.

“When the treatment plant at Egå is in full operation in autumn 2016, it will be pro-ducing 50% more electricity than it consumes. This has never been seen before,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The new technology works by using a form of bacteria to filter polluted materials from sewage water,” Jan Tøibner of water utility Aarhus Vand said. “Organic mate-rial is used [by the plant] to filter waste water. With the new form of bacteria we are using, the organic material uses much less energy in cleaning the wastewater.”

This means that the waste material can be used to create gas and electricity, while less energy is used in the purification process itself.

In a recent topping-out ceremony at the plant, Eva Kjer Hansen, the Danish Minister for Environment and Food, said: “Treatment plants must move forward from being energy guzzlers to being energy producers, and we have a really good example of this here at Egå. This is an area in which Denmark can enhance and develop its po-sition in eco-technology.”

It is clear from the press release that the amount of energy that is being used is

In terms of energy generation within the Water Industry and pushing further in the concept of the energy factory it can be clearly be argued that the water industry in the UK is pushing further and further in what they do. However there is always the potential to do more and generate yet more electricity from sewage sludge.

The production of biosolids through the sludge system is often not measured as much as it should be and there are technical challenges to measuring some elements within the sludge treatment system. With the right technology it possible that the Water Industry that has come so far in sludge management could potentially move much further ahead than it currently is. This would take the full adoption and monitoring over and above what is already done. Not just using HACCP principles that are currently used to guarantee the quality of what is produced but using the principles of the factory approach to optimise the efficiency of the process. However the driver isn’t truly there at the moment and it may take diversification of the industry in something such as gas to grid to make the investment pay.

If this is the case the monitoring of the product as it goes through the sludge chain becomes financially beneficial.

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being is being reduced so that the energy that is produced on site is surplus to what is used by increasing the efficiency of the treatment processes.

Discussion

The future of the Water Industry is going to see, certainly for larg-er treatment works the adoption of the “factory approach” that was raised six years ago in the STOWA report. In that report it pointed to the areas that it had already happened. Where the report was, in hind-sight, lacking. Was in the technological innovations that have hap-pened since.

It is clear from what has happened since that the Water Industry has chosen a direction insofar as the use of instrument fed model based approaches to control not only the wastewater treatment works but also the wastewater collection network. This is using fairly simple and widely available instrumentation to at least provide the fundamen-tal basis of control . Then using a combination of both static rule and model predictive control (see table right, from the Danish Network control philosophy in 2010) it is possible to provide not only control of individual element of the system but the entire collection and treat-ment system as a whole.

It is through a combination of the use of instrumentation and the use of model of differing forms that the future of the Water Industry lies

Oliver Grievson is the group manager of the Water Industry Process Automation and Control LinkedIn discussion group . He has many years experience firstly in the laboratory and for the past 12 years in the operational and process management of both potable and wastewater treatment works. He developed a passion for the control of water and wastewater treatment works whilst working for Yorkshire Water in the United Kingdom and decided to share this passion by setting up the WIPAC LinkedIn discussion group.

He is a Fellow of CIWEM & the IES as well as being a Chartered Environmentalist, Scientist and Water & Environmental Manager. He is a member of the MCERTS Steering Group for the monitoring of flow, a member of the ICA Special Interest Group on ICA as well as sitting on the Wastewater Management Committees of the Foundation for Water Research and the Chartered Institute of Water & Environmental Management.

Drones to test the watersAMPHIBIOUS drones are being developed to collect and test potentially dangerous water samples from difficult to access watercourses.

Dan Squire founded Drones Over Water last year in South Australia and has developed a sensor unit, which attaches to amphibious drones to allow the collection of samples from watercourses. He said the drones were highly efficient and could be used for collecting and testing samples from reservoirs, chemical spills, wastewater plants, tailings dams and ocean oil spills. The drones are capable of flying to a programmed GPS position, collecting a sample from a specific depth, testing the sample onboard and sending the data remotely. Squire will travel from Adelaide to the United States in April with a group from Flinders University’s New Venture Institute to speak with potential investors or business partners.

“I’m on the cusp of a couple of trials … the prototype’s pretty much finished,” he said.

“Then we’ll have a product that will be at the point where we’ve trialled our technology and we’ll be looking for investment … so we can go out to the market and start providing the service to people by operating our own equipment or selling the equipment itself.”

The global drones market is expected to reach US $5.59 billion by 2020, at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 32.22 per cent between 2015 and 2020. Squire’s drones can test water for a variety of parameters including temperature, pH, conductivity and redox. Samples are collected by an attachment hanging below the drone.

“When you lower it to a certain level the attachment opens up, takes a water sample at that level, it closes and flies the sample back,” he said. “We can go out to any watercourse – a river, a reservoir, a dam or the ocean – and take a sample and directly feed the data back to the people who need it.

“You can have GPS guided technology and at the end of the day there’s no one standing on the edge of a boat or on the edge of the water to be endangered - you can also go out to water courses that people can’t go out on like in the mines.”

Squire, 28, has been working on the project for about nine months after several years working in the agriculture, shipping, oil and gas and wastewater industries.

“I think the water industry is going to be our main customer followed by probably environmental, mining and also emergency such as for a chemical spill or a spill on the ocean where you can’t put people’s lives at risk to go out and monitor that water if it is dangerous.“But my focus right now is the water industry and doing that right and hopefully other industries will follow on from there.”

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Industry News(continued)

Article:

Getting data quality wrong and how to get it right

Introduction

The Water Industry has always been known to be data hungry, an estimate of the amount of data collected in the UK alone estimates it to be in the hundreds of millions of pieces of data per day ranging from customer billing data to operational data that is used to monitor the performance of the industry on a continuous basis. However the question has to be asked as to how much we can rely on this data on a day to day basis. This is especially the case with recent articles in the trade press that have disputed the accuracy of things like Smart Meters.

In reality, the customer side of things can be relied upon, it used for billing purposes and there are strict international standards around the manufacture of flow monitoring and quality control checks and independent auditing and management systems ensure that things are accurate. The advent of Smart Meters has come under some teething problems in some areas of the world but how much of this is people getting used to vast quantities of data and how much of it are standard uncertainties that are normal with all measuring systems is debatable. However despite all of this is the final quality control check of the customer and they will rightly challenge where things aren’t necessarily right.

Putting this aspect of the Water Industry aside it is in the operational side of the business where the use of instrumentation in order to collect data can have interesting results in informing operations as to the current state of operations especially in the Wastewater side of the business where the challenges of measurement are high.

In this article the consequences of poor quality data and how to use standard calibration & verification techniques to ensure that the quality of data in the operational side of the business (with specific emphasis on wastewater) will be discussed.

Where things can go wrong?

Most operational members of staff have seen the obvious errors in measurement on site, especially when looking at SCADA or telemetry. The mimic that says the final effluent of the treatment works is supposedly at 10000C is amusing but certainly won’t be believed for a second. These are the obvious errors that are, annoying as the true data is not available but don’t have the potential to cause any damage. They are simply wrong. On the flip side of this is the innocuous errors that could be right but in reality actually aren’t.

So what are the cause of poor quality data associated with online instrumentation?

• Poor selection of the instrument type - for example selecting a high range instrument for a low range application• Poor installation - for example installing a flow meter with insufficient space• Poor commissioning - for example measuring the wrong empty distance on a level based instrument • Poor maintenance - not keeping the instrument clean, replacing consumable parts or reagents• Telemetry errors - Not checking the scaling between the instrument & the telemetry system

These are probably the five most common problems that can occur which can produce errors that while erroneous the results that are produced are not sufficient enough to produce the confidence of the physical impossibility of the final effluent result at 10000C. An example of a flow meter result where a simple error in the calibration of a flow meter caused a surprising result is shown in figure 1 below

Figure 1 - A long term calibration error

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Figure 1 shows a flow meter reading over a period of 8 years which was subject to routine checking procedures and a change in the instrumentation that performed the measurement and an error in the setup meant that the flow meter was reading significantly higher than the true situation. As the flow me-ter was still within it consented dry weather flow reading in the period of time the error was not catastrophic enough to not be believed. It was only during a routine dip check by a particularly diligent member of the maintenance staff that picked up the error and the correction was made. It was afterwards that looking at the long term scale that the error in flow measurement is particularly evident. This error was caused by a very minor error in the empty head distance and once it was realised could be fixed in less than 5 minutes.

Figure 2 demonstrates another common cause of error in on-line instrumentation, telemetry scaling issues.

In figure 2 we see an example, again of flow based measurement, but using a different technique. The error in this case is within the realms of believability and could be typical of a particularly wet year. However routine calibration of the meter itself showed that the scaling in the telemetry system significantly differed with that on site. As a result of this the meter in telemetry was reading approximately 2.5 times higher than the meter onsite making the site appear that it was not compliant with the permitted limit.

In both of these cases a false situation was created by online measurement, in this case the flow that was passing through a wastewater treatment works. This could potentially lead to, depending upon what is actually being measured and how that measurement is being used to anything from under-estimation of what is leaving a wastewater treatment works to poor control of operational processes to poor investment decisions being made. Some scenarios.....

Scenario 1 - A Dissolved Oxygen probe on an activated sludge plant is reading 4mg/L and the actual process condition is 1mg/L. The plant is using a standard PID loop control with no ammonia monitoring on the effluent of the treatment works (a very common situation). The control valves of the aeration system close decreasing the amount of air to attempt to control to what is thought to be 2mg/L. The process condition is actually sub 0.5mg/L and actually not enough air is being provided for the bacteria or for maintaining the minimum air flow for mixing. The MLSS level crashes as it all settles to the bottom and the ammonia levels rise due to both insufficient mixed liquor and insufficient air. A pollution event is the result.

Scenario 2 - A treatment works has a history of flow non-compliance with its dry weather flow consent and so the flow meter readings are trusted. This results in an investigation into the root cause of the flow non-compliance and it appears to be infiltration related. This triggers surveying of the collection network. This reveals very little infiltration as the flow meter readings are actually falsely high. As a result the investment option is to apply for an increased permit and expansion of the treatment process. This results in unnecessary investment and a works that is suddenly over-sized for its current flows and loads creating not only an unnecessary CAPEX but an unnecessary OPEX expenditure in addition and a works that is more difficult to operate.

Both of these scenarios are hypothetical but have a grain of plausibility within them. The impact of poor measurement of on-line instrumentation can be large. This highlights the importance of the maintenance of online instrumentation and if in the future there is a greater reliance on online instrumentation it comes with additional responsibility. The need to maintain the instrumentation in order to maintain the data quality.

AQC & Maintaining Instrumentation

The Water Industry are experts at maintaining the instrumentation that are present on the treatment systems. Hundreds of thousands of checks are carried out each year along with all of the testing that is done in the laboratories.

When you work in the laboratory there is something called Analytical Quality Control (AQC)m normal laboratory procedures sees both duplicate and check samples being done. This isn’t once a week, once a month or even once a year, the frequency of these check are at the very least once a day and depending upon the analyte it can be several times an hour (1 in 20 samples used to be a duplicate and 1 in 20 samples a check sample alternating so there was a check sample 1 in 10 times used to be typical). All of the check samples used to be traceable back to national or international standards and the laboratory method itself used to be certified along with the laboratory certification (typically to ISO17025).

Figure 2: A typical example of scaling error

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Moving to online instrumentation, depending upon the type of instrumentation, this rarely happens. The checking of whether an online instrument is actually working correctly very much depends upon operational or operational maintenance procedures.

All of this does depend upon the type of instrument and what is actually being measured.

• Online analytical analysers tend to have an internal calibration sequence that uses traceable standards that calibrate the analyser on a regular basis (typi-cally daily). This ensures that the analyser remains accurate.

• Electromagnetic flow meters tend to go through complex factory based calibrations against a master meter and a factory calibration hard-coded into the meter. This then is internally verified by the meter itself to ensure it keeps itself within tolerances of the factory calibration.

• Level based flow meters can typically be compared against a calibration plate to check that a standard distance is maintained.• Dissolved Oxygen probes typically have a replaceable measurement cap that needs to be changed in order to maintain measurement integrity (typically an

annual task).

Online instrumentation is accurate as long as, like the laboratory techniques that are so diligently practised, are also applied to the field. In principle the operational tasks for online instrumentation are different but they are based upon the same principles of quality control. For example, when you work in the laboratory the principle of cross-contamination is driven into you. It is something every analyst in the laboratory has done and every analyst in the laboratory has paid the price for in the form of wasted analytical time and embarrassment. For online instrumentation it is the principle of keeping your measurement point and your instrument as clean as practically possible. Apart from keeping online instrumentation clean are the concepts of calibration versus verification.

The two concepts of calibration and verification are often confused and are often misunderstood and this is where online instrumentation needs to borrow from its analytical, laboratory based relations.

Calibration, in terms of an online instrument is the procedure of changing the measured parameter of an instrument so that it matches that of a traceable method of measurement. This is often done by applying a factor within the instrument itself. This is often something that the instrument needs to be returned to the original manufacturer to complete. Although some manufacturers have field services that can accomplish a calibration routine. For analytical instru-ments this can be accomplished using traceable standards in the field. This should almost always be a wet method of analysis. In the laboratory this would comparable to running a calibration curve.

Verification, in terms of an online instrument, is the checking of an instrument against a known measurement in order to confirm the correct operation of the instrument. It would not normally involve making any changes to the instrument itself. For an analytical analyser this would involve taking an independent sam-ple and comparing the results. For a flow meter checking the gauge or using an independent meter. The variant of the verification is the electronic verification which checks that the electronics of the device are working within a standard tolerance.

Lastly, for any instrument onsite there is the end to end testing of the telemetry systems, checking what the system is actually reading is the last vital check. As can be seen by the earlier example this is something that often can be one of the steps that is often missed.

Discussion

Getting the quality of data right is actually a very simple thing to do in theory but as often in life it is normally one of the most difficult things to put into practice. The simple steps quite simply are

1. Select, install and commission any online instrument correctly. Do not cut corners as most often it will end up with poor data quality as a result2. Keep it clean & maintained - Easier said than done, especially in a wastewater environment but absolutely vital. If it can’t be accessed then move it to where

it can. All instruments should be accessible for maintenance especially ones with consumable parts.3. Keep checking it - Getting into the habit of walking by a meter and seeing if its working or not is the first warning that something is not right. Comparing it

against a known sample by using verification methods is the next step4. Check what you are getting onsite is what everyone else is reading too.

In reality the practises that have been developed in laboratories, Analytical Quality Control, should also be applied in the field with online instrumentation if the quality of the data in the water industry is to be relied upon in the future. Especially as the volume of data is set to increase dramatically. In essence this is actually taking the culture of AQC from the laboratory and applying it to the field-based environment. The alternative is, as the industry gets more reliant on field-based online instrumentation, is that the operational situation that we see is seen with a slightly skewed and erroneous point of view.

Oliver Grievson is the group manager of the Water Industry Process Automation and Control LinkedIn discussion group . He has many years experience firstly in the laboratory and for the past 12 years in the operational and process management of both potable and wastewater treatment works. He developed a passion for the control of water and wastewater treatment works whilst working for Yorkshire Water in the United Kingdom and decided to share this passion by setting up the WIPAC LinkedIn discussion group.

He is a Fellow of CIWEM & the IES as well as being a Chartered Environmentalist, Scientist and Water & Environmental Manager. He is a member of the MCERTS Steering Group for the monitoring of flow, a member of the ICA Special Interest Group on ICA as well as sitting on the Wastewater Management Committees of the Foundation for Water Research and the Chartered Institute of Water & Environmental Management.

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Coming Soon:

Conferences.... in the next few months

In the next few months there is a programme of really interesting conferences that if you are in the area of Instrumentation, Process Automation & Control or indeed the Smart Network space are well worth thinking of going to.

Water & Energy Exchange Global 29th February - 2nd March, Lisbon, Portugal

The Water & Energy Exchange Conference is now in its 10th year and is probably the premium business to business conference with a power technical programme and a gala dinner that includes the WEX Global Innovation Awards and the Aqualia sponsored innovation forum. The theme of this year’s conference is “Water and Energy: Winning Strategies for the Resource Revolution” and so naturally includes the factory approach to the Water Industry. From the Instrumentation, Process Control & Automation side of things there will be several sessions of interest including

• The WEX Global Smart Water and Energy Forum: Optimisation in the Resource Revolution led by the WIPAC Group and it includes leading people within the Water Industry in this field including Andy Thornton of Hach, Simon Mazier of Perceptive APC and Jorge Malfeita of Acciona Agua.

• Water 4.0 and Resource Efficiency - Most of us give little importance to the complexity of the systems that bring us water and take it away when we are done with it. To make the best decisions for the future we need to learn from the three revolutions in urban water systems that have happened over the past 2,500 years and adapt to our time. Water 4.0 uses the digital world to run and control systems in a way that has never been done before. The results: positive impacts on all types of resources including energy. Presenters include Dirk Wittenburg of Remondis & Dieter Ernst of the German Water Partnership

WWT Smart Water Network’s Conference17th March, Birmingham, UK

In a definitive period of transformation, smart networks are at the forefront of investment plans for UK water companies.

The WWT Smart Water Networks Conference taking place on 17 March 2016 at the Holiday Inn Birmingham will consider the definition of a smart network, ad-dress the role of ‘smart’ in the current regulatory climate, and explore the potential for data innovation. The day will split for the afternoon, allowing delegates to choose their focus, be it clean or waste water. The conference will provide you with the opportunity to keep up-to-date with the smart innovation successes of your peers, gain insight into the business benefits of thinking smart, and explore the potential for novel data solutions in both clean and waste water.

SWAN Forum Annual Conference - Accelerating SMART Water 5th -6th April, London, UK

Join international water utilities and recognised industry professionals for the 6th Annual SWAN Conference, “Accelerating SMART Water” on 5-6 April at the Russell Hotel in London. The Conference will feature keynotes from Aqualia, the OECD, Cisco, Institute of Customer Service, and Isle Consulting, as well as 18 leading, global water utility speakers. Mixed panel sessions will cover a wide range of hot industry topics such as cybersecurity, interoperability, and increasing innovation and investment in the water sector. In addition, there will be a special panel focused on the role of smart water in emerging countries. Last year’s SWAN Conference attracted over 160 attendees from 18 countries and this year’s Conference is expected to be the largest and most exciting to date.

Smart Water Systems25th - 26th April, London, UK

Exceeding £2.2b, the water debt is a large contributor to national debt and is the greatest by far from the utility sector. This conference will discuss whether smart water systems could be a step towards the reduction of this debt. Discussions will focus on the short-term and long-term benefits of investing in smart water technology. It will offer a comprehensive analysis of some of the largest smart water system roll outs that the UK has ever seen. It will also examine what is happening in the industry overseas.

The conference will dissect the current challenges that the implementation of smart water systems into water networks has presented water companies with. A special focus will be on how we can locate and extract meaningful information from the big data that smart water systems generate. The conference will give first-hand accounts of how we can then use this information to produce significant environmental, social and economic advantage.

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March 2016

Optimising Control of fouling with Smart Sensors9th March 2016Northern Design Centre, Gateshead, UKHosted by Sensors for Water Interest Group

WWT Smart Water Networks17th March 2016Holiday Inn, Birmingham, UKHosted by WWT

April 2016

SWAN Forum Annual Conference - Accelerating SMART Water5th -6th April 2016London, UKHosted by SWAN Forum

Smart Water Systems25th - 26th April 2016London, UKHosted by SMI

WRc Innovation Day27th April 2016Swindon, UKHosted by WRc

May 2016

Robotics & Autonomous Systems4th May 2016National Space Centre, LeicesterHosted by Sensors for Water Interest Group

Flow Measurement Workshop25th May 2016HR Wallingford, OxfordshireHosted by Sensors for Water Interest Group

June 2016

IWA Leading Edge Technology Conference13th - 16th June 2016Jerez de la Frontera, SpainHosted by the International Water Association

ACE 201619th - 22nd June 2016Chicago, Illinois, USAHosted by the American Water Works Association

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Conferences, Events,Seminars & Studies

Conferences, Seminars & Events

Optimising Control of fouling with Smart Sensors

Where: Northern Design Centre, GatesheadWhen: 9th March 2015

Description

Fouling is a common problem which can effect sensors in any location includ-ing sewers, waste water treatment works, the environment, water treatment works and cooling water circuits. There are many different types of fouling depending on the location and liquid, e.g. fats, mineral deposits or biolog-ical growth, and each can create different maintenance requirements. This workshop will look at the effect of fouling on water sensors and the various strategies to control it which can be used to extend sensor life and maintain accurate measurements.

This event will be hosted by Andrew Chappel of the Environment Agency

WWT Smart Water Network’s Conference

Where: Birmingham, UKWhen: 17th March 2016

In a definitive period of transformation, smart networks are at the forefront of investment plans for UK water companies.

The WWT Smart Water Networks Conference taking place on 17 March 2016 at the Holiday Inn Birmingham will consider the definition of a smart net-work, address the role of ‘smart’ in the current regulatory climate, and ex-plore the potential for data innovation. The day will split for the afternoon, allowing delegates to choose their focus, be it clean or waste water. The conference will provide you with the opportunity to keep up-to-date with the smart innovation successes of your peers, gain insight into the business benefits of thinking smart, and explore the potential for novel data solutions in both clean and waste water.

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