Social equity implications of advanced water metering infrastructure

Abstract

Many water utilities across the United States have recently launched efforts to replace household water meters with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), or “smart meters,” to track and bill water use. In this exploratory research article, we use interviews and water utility data, and we review scholarly and grey literature to present five equity implications of AMI transitions: affordability, job loss, access and use of the technology, trust between households and utilities, and communications are ways residents can experience harm. These implications illustrate that AMI can disproportionately burden residents and highlight water utilities’ critical role as community institutions.