Water Utility Industry Research Articles

Use of Digital Technology to Calculate Water Footprints for Different Daily Use Items

Water security is a global concern for utilities due to urbanization and climate change. Although water utilities are directly affected by climate change, greenhouse gas emissions are also a result of their activities. Urban water cycles are becoming more sustainable as a result of the efficient operations of utilities made possible by digital technologies. Nonetheless, there is still a dearth of research on the global advancement of digital water transformation. Here, we report on the findings of an online survey that 64 utilities from 28 countries participated in to learn more about the digital transformation's effects on the water utility industry, its drivers, and the main technologies that make it possible. We discovered that the water distribution system serves as the gateway for additional digital technology adoption throughout the entire urban water cycle. In addition, the main forces behind the adoption of technology are economic gains, governmental regulations, and hydroclimatic conditions. We identify areas for future research aimed at improving our understanding of the role that company culture, consumer involvement, and regulations play in effective digital transformation, based on the survey results.

Water Distribution Systems: Integrated Approaches for Effective Utility Management

An extensive review of research advances in distribution system management was conducted to include methods, tools, and frameworks for integration. Sources included archival journals and water industry reports from research institutes, government regulators, and industry media covering case studies of advances that were implemented. Results showed that while effective management of water distribution systems requires an integrated approach, none of the available frameworks for one are in broad use in the water supply industry. Frameworks developed include a management standard of the American Water Works Association and Distribution System Optimization, a methodology for physical, hydraulic, and water quality performance assessment. The intelligent systems framework also offers a promising pathway to integration, but it lacks a definite structure. The voluntary aspect of adopting innovations within the fragmented and uncoordinated nature of the water utility industry poses a barrier to adoption of such innovations. Another barrier is the uncoordinated arrangements of water research stakeholders with different incentive structures. Intelligent water systems offer a way to incentive the utility industry to encourage implementation. They can provide a bottom-up approach where the utility industry can see advantages, as opposed to a top-down approach where they are expected to adopt a method without seeing clear benefits. Research to develop new and improved tools is needed, but the research roadmap should prioritize implementation.

Optimization of Energy Storage Systems and Demand Side Management to Maximize Water Utility Savings: A Hawaii Case Study

Abstract Energy conservation is a concern in many industries, and consequently, facility operators are turning to various efficiency measures or alternative power sources to reduce electricity costs. With the expanding use of intermittent resources, energy storage systems (ESSs) and demand side management (DSM) options are also gaining interest to maximize potential energy savings. Here, we study the potential of ESSs versus DSM for water utilities through a case study of the National Energy Laboratory of the Hawaii Authority (NELHA). NELHA is a multizone water utility in which most of its electricity usage is dedicated to pumping water. In this study, the optimization of the overall electricity charges for NELHA, using both ESSs or DSM via pump load shifting and optimization of pump house output is investigated. An optimization algorithm is created to determine the optimal size of the batteries for installation considering the water demand and energy costs in each zone. An extended approach of considering the characteristics of individual pumps on each pump house in the optimization model is applied to provide insight into the proper optimization framework for dispatching pumps depending on the current zonal load, given pump efficiencies, and maximum flowrates from each pump. The outcome from mathematical models using general quadratic pump efficiency functions and a simplified linear version of pump efficiency is compared to determine the significance of this difference in modeling methodology in estimations and evaluations. Additionally, the effect of increasing solar power on electricity purchased is analyzed. This work will help to establish the role of ESS and DSM in energy savings for water utility industry as well as show what methods should be used for evaluation of the potential of ESS and DSM interventions.

Approaches to herbicide (MCPA) pollution mitigation in drinking water source catchments using enhanced space and time monitoring

Freshwater occurrences of the selective acid herbicide 2-methyl-4-chloro-phenoxyacetic acid (MCPA) are an ongoing regulatory and financial issue for water utility industries as the number and magnitude of detections increase, particularly in surface water catchments. Assessments for mitigating pesticide pollution in catchments used as drinking water sources require a combination of catchment-based and water treatment solutions, but approaches are limited by a lack of empirical data. In this study, an enhanced spatial (11 locations) and temporal (7-hourly to daily sampling) monitoring approach was employed to address these issues in an exemplar surface water source catchment (384 km2). The spatial sampling revealed that MCPA was widespread, with occurrences above the 0.1 μg L−1 threshold for a single pesticide being highly positively correlated to sub-catchments with higher proportions of ‘Improved Grassland’ land use (r = 0.84). These data provide a strong foundation for targeting catchment-based mitigation solutions and also add to the debate on the ecosystems services provided by such catchments. Additionally, of the 999 temporal samples taken over 12 months from the catchment outlet, 25% were above the drinking water threshold of 0.1 μg L−1. This prevalence of high concentrations presents costly problems for source water treatment. Using these data, abstraction shutdowns were simulated for five scenarios using hydrometeorological data to explore the potential to avoid intake of high MCPA concentrations. The scenarios stopped abstraction for 4.2–9.3% of the April–October period and reduced intake of water containing over 0.1 μg L−1 of MCPA by 16–31%. This represents an important development for real-time proxy assessments for water abstraction in the absence of more direct pesticide monitoring data.

Veterans Move From Helmets to Hardhats

AWWA predicts in the next 10 years the water utility industry will be faced with 45 percent of its workforce eligible for retirement. Do you have positions that are going unfilled or taking months to fill? Consider that approximately 200,000 men and women leave US military service and return to life as civilians each year, according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Optimal selection of acoustic leak detection techniques for water pipelines using multi-criteria decision analysis

PurposeThere has been a sustained interest over the past couple of decades in developing sophisticated leak detection techniques (LDTs) that are economical and reliable. Majority of current commercial LDTs are acoustics based and they are not equally suitable to all pipe materials and sizes. There is also limited knowledge on the comparative merits of such acoustics-based leak detection techniques (ALDTs). The purpose of this paper is to review six commercial ALDTs based on four decisive criteria and subsequently develop guidance for the optimal selection of an ALDT.Design/methodology/approachNumerous publications and field demonstration reports are reviewed for evaluating the performance of various ALDTs in this study to inform their optimal selection using an integrated multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework. The findings are validated using interviews of water utility experts.FindingsThe study approach and the findings will have a broad impact on the water utility industry by identifying a suite of suitable ALDTs for a range of typical application scenarios. The evaluated ALDTs include listening devices, noise loggers, leak-noise correlators, free-swimming acoustic, tethered acoustic, and acoustic emissions. The evaluation criteria include cost, reliability, access requirements, and the ability to quantify leakage severity. The guidance presented in this paper will support efficient decision making in water utility management to minimize pipeline leakage.Originality/valueThis study attempts to address the problem of severe dearth of performance data for pipeline inspection techniques. Performance data reported in the published literature on various ALDTs are appropriately aggregated and compared using a MCDA, while the uncertainty in performance data is addressed using the Monte Carlo simulation approach.

Leveraging Big Data Tools and Technologies: Addressing the Challenges of the Water Quality Sector

The water utility sector is subject to stringent legislation, seeking to address both the evolution of practices within the chemical/pharmaceutical industry, and the safeguarding of environmental protection, and which is informed by stakeholder views. Growing public environmental awareness is balanced by fair apportionment of liability within-sector. This highly complex and dynamic context poses challenges for water utilities seeking to manage the diverse chemicals arising from disparate sources reaching Wastewater Treatment Plants, including residential, commercial, and industrial points of origin, and diffuse sources including agricultural and hard surface water run-off. Effluents contain broad ranges of organic and inorganic compounds, herbicides, pesticides, phosphorus, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals of emerging concern. These potential pollutants can be in dissolved form, or arise in association with organic matter, the associated risks posing significant environmental challenges. This paper examines how the adoption of new Big Data tools and computational technologies can offer great advantage to the water utility sector in addressing this challenge. Big Data approaches facilitate improved understanding and insight of these challenges, by industry, regulator, and public alike. We discuss how Big Data approaches can be used to improve the outputs of tools currently in use by the water industry, such as SAGIS (Source Apportionment GIS system), helping to reveal new relationships between chemicals, the environment, and human health, and in turn provide better understanding of contaminants in wastewater (origin, pathways, and persistence). We highlight how the sector can draw upon Big Data tools to add value to legacy datasets, such as the Chemicals Investigation Programme in the UK, combined with contemporary data sources, extending the lifespan of data, focusing monitoring strategies, and helping users adapt and plan more efficiently. Despite the relative maturity of the Big Data technology and adoption in many wider sectors, uptake within the water utility sector remains limited to date. By contrast with the extensive range of applications of Big Data in in other sectors, highlight is drawn to how improvements are required to achieve the full potential of this technology in the water utility industry.

Why Flint Matters

The issues in flint will be long‐lasting locally, but the situation also has far‐reaching implications for the water utility industry as a whole.

A resilience-based prioritization scheme for water main rehabilitation

Water supply infrastructure in the United States is one lifeline system that is in dire need of huge financial investments to counter pipeline deterioration while keeping up with increasing demands and reliability goals. With decreasing financial resources available to state and local governments, effective decision-making tools for pipeline prioritization are becoming an increasingly integral part of the water utility industry. A majority of existing prioritization frameworks are merely based on the likelihood of the failure of pipelines and the resulting consequences, with little consideration given to the utility's response time to a water pipeline failure. This paper presents a novel resilience-based framework for effective prioritization of water distribution pipelines. The novelty lies in estimating the utility's response time to a pipeline failure. The proposed framework is demonstrated on a section of a real water distribution network in a coastal city of the United States. The pipeline priority results obtained are also compared with those from a more traditional risk-based prioritization scheme, and a reasonably significant difference has been observed. While availability of quality data is a challenge, this study brings to attention the importance of response time to water pipeline failures and demonstrates the merits of incorporating it in a prioritization scheme.

Benefit of Applying a Standard Business Process Framework to the Water Utility Industry.

Benefit of Applying a Standard Business Process Framework to the Water Utility Industry.

Decentralized Water Systems for Sustainable and Reliable Supply

The water utility industry is under enormous pressure to meet the challenges of increasing demands due to population growth and lifestyle changes, and depleting freshwater resources. Deteriorating supply infrastructure makes the task of meeting water demands even more challenging. The combination of source and supply challenges encouraged the consideration of sustainable and reliable alternatives for future water supply management. On-site greywater reuse is one such alternative that is becoming increasingly popular for its sustainable benefits such as ready availability, energy savings, reduced freshwater withdrawals and less effluent runoff. While the treatment technologies for making it economically viable are currently being investigated by other researchers, this paper investigates the improvement in supply reliability when traditional water supply systems are complemented by on-site greywater reuse. A robust computational model is developed for quantifying reliabilities of traditional and on-site greywater reuse systems for a given study area. The results revealed that there is up to 17% of improvement in supply reliability due to the on-site greywater reuse systems. A one-way sensitivity analysis conducted on the results indicated that the observed reliability improvement is sensitive to system age, pipeline roughness, treatment efficiency and allowable use of reclaimed water. Further research is needed to investigate the value of this reliability improvement by considering the life cycle cost and energy implications of on-site greywater reuse alternative.

Benefit of Applying a Standard Business Process Framework to the Water Utility Industry.

Benefit of Applying a Standard Business Process Framework to the Water Utility Industry.

2013 Strategic directions in the US water and wastewater utility industry

Water utility leaders are embracing formal asset management, but massive capital needs persist.

Strategic directions in the US water utility industry

A survey of water utility leaders shows that financial issues, and all issues that drive investment or costs, remain front and center.

The Epidemic of Corrosion, Part 2: The Importance of Communication

In the water and wastewater utility industry, corrosion is driving up utility operating, maintenance, and capital costs and, in some cases, degrading drinking water quality. “Part 1: Examining Pipe Life” (December 2011) discussed the widespread nature of corrosion, the different types of corrosion, and the required treatments as part of a corrosion control program. This article looks at some of the political aspects associated with corrosion and pipe repair, replacement, and rehabilitation.

Project Blueprint: Greater Cincinnati Water Works Creates a New Blueprint for Success!

Project Blueprint: Greater Cincinnati Water Works Creates a New Blueprint for Success!Strategic business planning has been an important tool to help guide Greater Cincinnati Water Works (GCWW) closer to its vision of being a utility that will serve as a standard for excellence in the water utility industry. Since 1995, Greater Cincinnati Water Works has used strategic business planning to take a long-term view of the utility's goals and operations and to determine strategies and...Author(s)Cathy BaileySourceProceedings of the Water Environment FederationDocument typeConference PaperPublisherWater Environment FederationPrint publication date Jan, 2012ISSN1938-6478DOI10.2175/193864712811694929Volume / Issue2012 / 1Content sourceUtility Management ConferenceCopyright2012Word count336

The Key Components of Job Satisfaction in Malaysian Water Utility Industry

Problem statement: This study aimed to examine the impacts of employee's rewards and employee's motivation on employee's job satisfactio n between public and private water utility organization in Malaysia. Approach: A total of 689 employees from both sectors partici pated. While hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to t est the relationship between employee's rewards, employee's motivation and employee's job satisfacti on, gap analysis was utilized to determine the significant differences on the levels of employee's rewards, employee's motivation and employee's job satisfaction between both sectors. Results: The result revealed that (1) employee's reward was positively related to motivation; and (2) both empl oyee's rewards and employee's motivation were found to had positive significant influences on emp loyees' job satisfaction. The t-test result reveale d that employees in public water utility organization scored significantly higher on the levels of employee's rewards, motivation and job satisfaction . Conclusion: The interesting findings showed that there are other factors than rewards and motivation involved in job satisfaction. However, motivation seems to give more impact to job satisfaction as co mpared to rewards for both organizations.

Energy Efficiency in the Water Industry

While there are energy efficiency programs targeting the water & wastewater utility industry, implementation of energy efficiency has been uneven within the industry. The water & wastewater utility industry faces a number of challenges when implementing energy efficiency measures due, in part, to its capital intensive nature and the interaction of public interests on water treatment. Because of these capital limitations many water & wastewater utilities have not invested in their infrastructure and water delivery assets in as many as thirty years, with the result that many water & wastewater utilities are currently served by aging and sometimes inefficient equipment. As water becomes scarcer due to drought conditions in some parts of the United States and water treatment regulations become more stringent and energy-intensive, improving efficiency in water and energy use will become indispensible for water and wastewater utility managers and end use customers across a variety of economic sectors. This paper will provide valuable insights into the Watergy approach to tackle the issues and opportunities faced by water and wastewater utilities. Based on a successful Watergy project at a utility in Pennsylvania that improved energy efficiency at several pumping stations and waste water treatment plants, other water & wastewater utilities and municipalities will learn how they can implement similar projects and achieve significant water and energy efficiency gains, thereby addressing both water scarcity and energy costs simultaneously. This paper will also help funding entities design programs that take into account the unique characteristics of the water utility industry. The authors conclude with policy and technical recommendations for future energy efficiency efforts in the water and waste water industry.

Optimizing Operations Using Mobile and Wireless Technology

This article discusses the Water Research Foundation‐sponsored report, “Field Computing Applications and Wireless Technologies for Water Utilities”. The report explains the current state of wireless and field computing applications across the water utility industry, as well as the future needs likely to be generated by these applications’ increasing use, and provides case studies and tools for helping utilities effectively prioritize, plan, and implement these programs. The article discusses several highlights related to the adoption of field computing applications and mobile resource management (MRM) solutions by water utilities.

System Planning for Total Site Security

This article discusses the critical components of an effective security system for the water utility industry. Perimeter security, gate security, CCTV/video systems, building security systems, and access control are discussed.