Anglian Water pilots transformative AI technology

Trans­for­ma­tion of Anglian Water’s treat­ment and recy­cling process­es is being made pos­si­ble by tri­als of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) dri­ven soft­ware devel­oped by Nor­we­gian tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny InfoTiles.

The dig­i­tal ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the UK util­i­ty on a 12-month pilot project focus­ing on biofil­ters and anaer­o­bic digestion.

Both bio­log­i­cal process­es and assets are inte­gral to the treat­ment of waste­water and a key aim of the col­lab­o­ra­tion is to enhance oper­a­tional vis­i­bil­i­ty and deci­sion-mak­ing around asset management.

The ini­tial tri­al of the InfoTiles soft­ware will mon­i­tor the rotat­ing arms of biofil­ters at 15 sites to assess whether they are rotat­ing when need­ed. It will also involve mea­sur­ing sludge blan­ket lev­els in pri­ma­ry set­tle­ment tanks at a fur­ther 15 sites, to ensure they stay with­in opti­mal ranges for effec­tive operation.

The data, col­lect­ed from a mix of new and exist­ing sen­sors through Anglian Water’s exist­ing super­vi­so­ry con­trol & data acqui­si­tion con­trol (SCADA) sys­tems, will be com­bined with flow rates and pub­licly avail­able weath­er data to build a rich con­tex­tu­al overview of what is hap­pen­ing at the water recy­cling plants in real-time.

What is more, InfoTiles can also com­bine Anglian’s exist­ing SCADA sys­tems into one event stream­ing plat­form that can aggre­gate, com­pare, and visu­alise reli­a­bil­i­ty of the equip­ment. This same plat­form also allows Anglian Water to tri­al dif­fer­ent sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy and eas­i­ly com­pare the reli­a­bil­i­ty and accu­ra­cy of the dif­fer­ent sen­sors under­go­ing testing.

InfoTiles’ strength is in the abil­i­ty to visu­alise and mod­el process data through machine learn­ing to show the like­li­hood of crit­i­cal fail­ures in waste­water treat­ment, such as poten­tial stop­pages and breakdowns.

This will give Anglian Water, one of the UK’s largest water util­i­ties, the abil­i­ty to antic­i­pate, detect and resolve poten­tial prob­lems. By con­tin­u­al­ly assess­ing the health and effec­tive­ness of assets, main­te­nance teams can be deployed much more efficiently.

The two com­pa­nies were brought togeth­er through Water­Start, a US-based mem­ber­ship plat­form which seeks to remove com­mon bar­ri­ers to the adop­tion of inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, and con­nects util­i­ties and munic­i­pal­i­ties with solu­tion providers globally.

“We are so proud to be involved in this pilot pro­gramme, which will trans­form the way we man­age our water recy­cling sites,” said Adam Jes­sop, opti­mi­sa­tion tech­nol­o­gist at Anglian Water. “Col­lab­o­rat­ing with inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies through Water­Start has helped the team to work at pace to find solu­tions and ways to improve the ser­vice provided.”

The over­all aim of the col­lab­o­ra­tion is to enhance oper­a­tional vis­i­bil­i­ty, cre­ate more informed deci­sion-mak­ing, and under­stand where and how to pri­ori­tise main­te­nance of the water company’s assets.

Adam Wood, chief prod­uct offi­cer at InfoTiles said, “Our Nordic cus­tomers use InfoTiles to guide their main­te­nance deci­sions with real-time data. Our team is enthu­si­as­tic to col­lab­o­rate with the tech­ni­cians and ana­lysts at Anglian Water to tai­lor the InfoTiles plat­form to enable bet­ter, data-dri­ven, main­te­nance at this major UK utility.”

Nathan Allen, exec­u­tive direc­tor at Water­Start, said, “InfoTiles have proven the tech­nol­o­gy works in the Nordics, and Water­Start is thrilled to sup­port the company’s expan­sion into the UK mar­ket. Effec­tive data man­age­ment is a glob­al chal­lenge for water util­i­ties and it is excit­ing to see the out­comes of the pilot as the tech­nol­o­gy is expect­ed to be broad­ly scal­able among our glob­al mem­ber­ship base.”