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Datatecnics on Solutions to Overcome Barriers in Water Management
With the World Water Tech Innovation Summit coming up on February 25-26, anticipation is building among industry leaders and innovators as they gather to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the impending water crisis. This year’s summit is set to highlight cutting-edge, data-driven solutions that are transforming water utilities, enhancing resilience, and ensuring sustainable operations. Datatecnics is at the forefront of this transformation, applying IoT and AI technologies to combat network stress and reduce non-revenue water (NRW) losses.
We spoke to Datatecnics’ Founder and CEO, Suhayl Zulfiquar, to discuss how their advanced solutions are reshaping utility management. Suhayl’s insights not only illuminate the potential of smart technology in predicting network failures and optimising maintenance but also offer a glimpse into a future where data-driven decision-making overcomes traditional barriers in water management:
How are you leveraging IoT and AI to support utilities in anticipating and pinpointing network stresses, and decreasing non-revenue water (NRW) losses?
Suhayl Zulfiquar: We’re headed towards a water crisis. Some countries will reach it sooner than others, but if we don’t change course, we all face the same fate.
AI is not a magic bullet, but when harnessed right, it has the power to unlock efficiencies and resilience, and a level of decision-making that has previously been unattainable.
Here’s how we’ve harnessed it at Datatecnics:
1. We’ve developed Foresight, a platform that organises, cleanses, and connects all utility data sources, making them AI-ready.
2. Built on years of peer-reviewed academic research at the world’s leading water engineering universities, our experts have developed best-in-class failure prediction algorithms that help utilities understand risk of failure in their network, discover the remaining useful life of pipelines, and identify likeliest locations of leaks, just to mention a few examples.
3. These algorithms are packaged into easy-to-use tools for Asset Management and Leakage teams, helping them decrease NRW losses through exponentially better and quicker decision-making.
What projects do you have in the pipeline, and how do they support the sector with AMP8 objectives and/or European regulations coming into play in 2025 and beyond?
Suhayl Zulfiquar: We’ve got many exciting projects in the pipeline, some on our home turf here in the UK, and some overseas.
Hitting the AMP8 target for cutting leakage by 17% is a tall order, but not impossible with the right technology, which I’d argue, largely exists already.
In the UK, we’re scaling deployments of our ‘Leak Response’ tool (an AI-powered application which predicts the likeliest location of leaks, optimises survey routes for technicians, and captures data on leakage investigations into a single, digital source of truth) at many water companies.
We’re also deploying the world’s most advanced monitoring system for critical mains, Ground Truth. For one UK utility, with Ground Truth, we’re helping them monitor and predictively maintain a strategic, large-diameter trunk main that supplies water for one of the country’s biggest cities. Another project focuses on predictive maintenance of trunk mains running close to properties, where the consequence of failure is high (potentially a threat to life).
More and more utilities now recognise that AI-powered solutions have made leaps in progress – even in just the past year. What was once seen as a nice-to-have is quickly becoming a must-have to meet regulatory targets.
You’re working closely with utilities and accelerators, how are you interacting with the water ecosystem to continue to grow and drive adoption of your technology among utility companies (whether through partnerships, new market entry, or additional product development)?
Suhayl Zulfiquar: We recently signed an exciting partnership deal with Network Plus who are a leading utility and infrastructure provider in the UK. We’re especially excited about this partnership, as it allows us to deploy our technology faster and on a wider scale, backed by the sector-leading expertise of Network Plus.
Beyond the UK, we’re seeing fast-growing international interest, particularly from utilities in Belgium, the Middle East, and North America. It’s been fascinating to learn how the same problem statements manifest in different contexts.
The beauty of our solutions is that they can be easily adopted to these varying contexts, so we’re excited to be able to bring this technology to utilities globally.
This year we’ve also had the pleasure of taking part in CRH Ventures’ Accelerator for Water Solutions, which has been a fantastic opportunity to work with some of the biggest companies tackling global infrastructure challenges.
Engage with industry experts, explore cutting-edge technologies, and discover how Datatecnincs is shaping the future of water utility management through data-driven solutions that overcome barriers in water management.