Dodge Data Analytics Smart Market Report: Digital Capabilities of US Water Utilities with Gregg Herrin

“The report is about 30 pages long and does highlight the range of maturity that we see across water utilities,” said Herrin. “many are a lot farther along in their journey of going digital. We see a lot that emphasizes the different silos that exist within those utilities as well. Whether those are departmental silos of different parts of the organization, not interacting or not getting as much value as they could from each other, or data silos where the systems that are being used aren’t as connected as they could be, to provide the types of insight that could be shared.”

In the report, Herrin said throughout the report there is an emphasis on the fact that there are technical challenges, but then there also are people challenges. The challenges are primarily about getting departments to work together more closely. There are challenges even around, people aging out of their company. Aging infrastructure gets worse over time. Aging staff provide a whole different set of challenges, but also some opportunities. There is a need for utilities to be able to bring their technologies together in a way that’s more open and more flexible so that they can get the things that are more insightful across those different departmental silos.

SS: How do you go about doing that?

GH: From Bentley’s standpoint, recognizing that we’re, a software and services provider,  so our part in helping make that happen really is in connecting these different technologies together in a way that they provide better insight and better support for the types of decisions that the utility needs to make. Ultimately for the utility, it all comes down to better decision-making. Nobody wants technology for technology’s sake. You want technology because it helps you do your job better. And for a water utility, that job is providing clean drinking water when it’s needed in a way that’s financially responsible.

SS: Water utilities have so much disparate information. How is that managed?

GH: A utility currently uses a lot of different pieces of technology.  There is information that’s stored in GIS systems, there’s information coming from SCADA systems and other data collection feeds. There’s typically information in customer systems, et cetera. And as we see more and more with smart meters, and there is just so much more data pouring in. With that come challenges as to what do you do with all the data? It needs to be turned into something more actionable that helps support, helps flag things where you might need to make a decision and help support what your decision is going to be.

Bentley’s part in all this is to bring all that together in a way that helps. You  may hear the concept of a common data environment, but typically, it exists actually in several different ways. You may have multiple common data environments, maybe one that’s GIS centric and maybe another one is oriented around operating systems. We look at it from the standpoint of having a connected data environment. It’s when you start making those connections between the technology that you really start to see the benefits that you can get. It’s unreasonable to think that there will ever be one common data environment to cover everything. There are  too many vendors, too many things that are popping up. And, and quite honestly, who can even predict what might be there five years from now, or 10 years from now? It’s better to have a connected data environment where you can take whatever these different systems are that exist elsewhere and federate them together in a way that you can get more, advantage from all of them.

In water utilities , the GIS department may have their set of information that may or may not include some of the customer billing information. The engineering department has its own set of tools that it uses for planning and capital improvements. So the operations team has their own systems that they use to monitor the maintenance team may have a separate set of tools that they use to help scheduling and sending crews out and so on. But when you do pull those together, you know, that’s where suddenly you realize, Oh, if we take this information that’s available to us, coming back from our SCADA information.

We combine that with some of the engineering simulation tools that can help us identify where there might be a problem that we should look at, and then we can trigger to send a crew out to go and investigate that. All of it can be located spatially because we’re pulling in information from our GIS that tells us more specifically where these pipes, valves and things are so that we can go manage it better. Getting more mature as a water utility doesn’t require that you throw something away and start over. It’s actually just the opposite. You should be able to take advantage of what you’ve already got, pull it together in a way that’s more meaningful. Then you have that combination of things that you otherwise would have been blind to.

SS: That gives you a bigger picture. And so this is all inside the digital twins, or is this separate from digital twins?

GH: Yeah. The digital twin concept really is about bringing that together. So you have a more comprehensive, digital representation of all these assets and processes that the utility is managing. One of the challenges, many people that when they hear about digital twins, Oh, does that mean I need to re-invent something? Do I need to throw away all my other stuff and replace it with this digital twin? That sounds like a lot of work and a lot of money, we’re never going to get there. That’s just absolutely not true. You know digital twins can have a variety of depth and color to them, just like everything else we’ve talked about here.

Starting with what they have, utilities may be a lot closer to connecting that in a way that they get a better digital twin than what they think they would have. A lot of that comes into also not only the technology itself, but back to the point that it’s also about the people.  A lot of utilities don’t have big staff, so they don’t have the time and people to look at it. The role of a digital integrator starts to come into play as well. For Bentley a company called Digital Waterworks does digital integration type of work that can help utilities with those shortages of time or talent, etc., whatever they need to be able to go connect these systems and set it up in a way that it solves their problems, whether emergency preparedness and response or capital improvement planning, or even just exposing some of the information they already have in ways that other departments and executives at the utility can understand better and react to what they’re seeing.

SS: Do you see that the digital twin technology is really repurposed technology or is it really new?

GH: It’s actually a bit of both. It certainly is re-purposing other technologies that are already available. So if you have a GIS system, a SCADA system, if you have simulation models, it’s taking those same capabilities. And again, connecting them in a way that makes them more useful. The digital twin itself is a bit new in that it’s that central piece that starts to pull that together better and start to expose it more as well so that you can extend beyond whatever the pieces are you’ve got now. And start to add more again, depending on what your biggest pain points are as, as a utility. As an example, hydraulic simulation tools and SCADA data we can bring that together through a digital twin. You’re connecting it through this new digital twin concept that allows you to take information that you’re probably already getting with SCADA signals coming in and telling you where tank levels are and what pumps are on and off.

By connecting it with the hydraulic simulation tools that previously might have just been used by the engineering department to do a master planning studies or do an occasional functional design of something, and instead connecting the real-time SCADA information with the simulation tools actually allows you to do things like start seeing what’s happening in your system, in between those monitored locations, that the SCADA is reporting back to you. It helps you see things that aren’t directly measured through the SCADA system, but the simulation tool can fill in those in between the gaps for you. And it also helps you start to see into the future as well. So where the SCADA system only tells you where you’ve already got a problem, the combination of that with simulation tools allows you to look into the future.

Because things were operating differently than usual, we may end up with a tank running dry, and so we should alert ourselves to that. What are the possible actions we should take? Should we reroute water from another part of the system? Should we turn this pump on sooner? What are the things we would do? It provides repurposing the technology, and bringing it together in a way that allows you to understand the impact of those different potential decisions. You can understand how each of them is likely to play out and then choose which decision you’re going to go with in the real world. When each of these systems is siloed and when each of these departments is siloed, those things don’t happen. You’re always in reactive mode. This provides a way to help you avoid some of those problems in the first place and understand better the impact of your decisions before you push the real world buttons.

SS: Interesting. How much of a role do you think artificial intelligence plays in?

GH: I think artificial intelligence and the closely related machine learning concepts have a role to play, but I also want to caution that some people don’t quite know what it is, but they think they should want it. Because you can’t turn anywhere without seeing people espousing the wonders of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is a useful tool. It’s still just a tool. It needs to be applied to something meaningful.

We’re going to be able to solve this type of problem using genetic algorithms or using a neural network or other methods that are sort of empirically based. Artificial intelligence is just another tool in that toolbox. It has some more advanced systems behind it, broader, more generic approaches to it. It will definitely be an increasing part of the landscape in years to come. But just because something has artificial intelligence, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to do a better job for you.

SS: Yes, of course. Many people probably just gravitate towards the next best thing.

There are wonderful things it can do. It still requires that you have professionals engaged with what’s going on with your system. This is really about empowering your engineers, your operators, your capital planners, your maintenance crew, empowering them to do better, make better decisions and that takes a combination of technologies for that to happen.

SS: Great. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered?

GH: The only other thing that I would point out is it is really interesting when you look through the study in more detail and you see for different areas again, that spectrum of maturity that you see at different utilities. I would say maybe in the next five to 10 years to see how that maturity starts to shift, how more utilities are moving towards the upper end of that maturity spectrum. But I also think it’s going to be very, very interesting to your point about artificial intelligence. For example, it’s going to be very interesting to see how the spectrum itself shifts, what is the next level of maturity is beyond what we’re starting to work with today or maybe haven’t quite figured out yet.

For us as Bentley I really enjoy seeing the other things that are happening in other industries, beyond just water and looking at which parts of that can we take and apply to the water industry to make this industry work better. What can we learn from what’s happening in electric and gas. What are the energy utilities doing differently and how could water learn from that and do a better job? What are the things that are happening in some of the more private sector areas like oil and gas? Are there things there that we could learn from and apply to water, whether that’s network water or treatment plants? These things from other areas may be able to be connected in a way that helps bring clean drinking water to people when they need it.

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