Pioneering technological solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the water sector have won a share of £42 million from the Ofwat Innovation Fund’s Water Breakthrough Challenge.
The Ofwat Innovation Fund is investing £600 million between 2020 and 2030, with winners of this year’s challenge working with promising innovators from across different sectors and around the world to develop solutions to the water sector’s biggest challenges.
The 16 winning projects have shared £42.7 million in funding to scale solutions to some of the sector’s biggest challenges. In addition, winners are required to put up at least an additional 10% themselves, taking the total value of money going into winning projects to £48.8 million. Winners are required to share the lessons learnt from funded projects openly to ensure progress can be built upon by all water companies.
Smart Skies, Healthy Waters has been awarded £6 million for its project to create a ‘drone- and lab-in-a-box’ that provides near-real-time, on-site results and lab-grade analysis of coastal bathing water quality.
Using automated drones, robotics and cutting-edge sampling techniques, Smart Skies, Healthy Waters aims to greatly improve coastal water monitoring. This capability will significantly increase the monitoring and sampling frequency, cutting the time to see results from up to three days to a matter of minutes, meaning customers can access near-live updates on bathing-water quality rather than having to wait.
The partnership sees Northumbrian Water working with Newcastle University, drone experts Skyports Drone Services, real-time sensor specialists Proteus Instrument and data experts Makutu Dot IO.
A further £1.3 million has been awarded to Space Eye to transform the use of satellite technology for the water industry. The project will include the design, launch and operation of micro-satellites to provide continual imaging of the entire UK water pipe network.
Machine-learning algorithms will enable Space Eye to quickly locate leaks in pipes that become visible by rising to the surface, identify water wastage from unauthorised or unnecessary water use, and analyse surface water to check whether harmful chemicals are impacting water quality, to help water companies fix problems quickly, resulting in fewer delays for customers affected by water supply issues and minimising disruption.
Five water companies in England and Wales, led by South Staffordshire Water, are teaming up with US micro-satellite experts Quub, the University of Wolverhampton, Scottish Water and Spring – the centre of excellence for water sector innovation.
SandSCAPE – a collaboration between four water companies, led by Thames Water – has also been awarded £2 million to test at full scale tank-like robots (up to 5 metres in length) that make chemical-free ‘slow sand filtration’ more efficient. Slow sand filtration is a highly effective, nature-based solution for cleaning water, but has a built-in inefficiency because of the need to regularly stop and drain the sand filters of water to remove the sand layer containing the particles captured when making the water fit to drink.
The robots being tested by SandSCAPE will trial underwater cleaning of sand filters while in operation. Effective, chemical-free alternatives for water purification will benefit the environment while maintaining the highest water quality standards for customers.
David Black, CEO of Ofwat said:
“Water underpins our society and economy, and the water sector faces a range of challenges requiring urgent solutions. The Ofwat Innovation Fund was established five years ago to incentivise the water sector to collaborate with partners across industry, charities, and academia to accelerate the pace of transformation and create lasting benefits for customers and the environment.
“The level of ambition of this year’s winners – including deploying robots, drones, satellites and state-of-the-art artificial intelligence – is remarkable. The 16 winning projects involve 15 water companies working with 70 partners - from world-class universities to engineering powerhouses, environmental charities and even NASA. We are supporting these projects to prove their impact so that they can be scaled, not only here in England and Wales, but exported around the world as a driver of economic growth”.
Richard Warneford, Wastewater Director, Northumbrian Water (Smart Skies, Healthy Waters lead partner) said:
“This project provides a ground-breaking opportunity to harness new technologies to enable more frequent monitoring of our bathing waters. This project will be a world first and a step change for our sector, helping to ensure healthier waters for our customers, communities and our environment."
Caroline Cooper, Strategy and Regulation Director, South Staffordshire Water (Space Eye lead partner), said:
“The water and wastewater pipe network in the UK is long enough to reach beyond the moon. Satellite technology can help us keep an eye on the whole network at once, while machine learning algorithms can identify anomalies quickly, like leaks in remote areas, so that water companies can dispatch engineers to fix them. Thanks to the Water Breakthrough Challenge, we aim to launch operational micro-satellites by 2026.”
The increasing deployment of artificial intelligence to solve challenges in the water sector is also reflected in this year’s winners.
PEDAL, led by South West Water in collaboration with NASA Bioscape, the University of Exeter, Cardiff University and others, has been awarded £2 million to use satellite and drone remote sensing, artificial intelligence, conventional water quality monitoring, and input from citizen science to build a digital twin that can forecast Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) which lead to poor water quality and ecosystem loss, enabling the water companies to take preventative action faster.
£1 million has been awarded to TORCH, led by Anglian Water in collaboration with partners including Peterborough City Council, the universities of Sheffield and Exeter and Noventa Energy, to use AI to enable heat recovery from sewers and wastewater facilities for re-use in district heating networks – where heat is supplied to consumers from a central source via a network of underground pipes – providing lower cost heating, cutting carbon emissions and helping to improve the performance of sewer assets.
Meanwhile £1.9 million has been awarded to a collaboration between Yorkshire Water, The Rivers Trust, Surfers Against Sewage, British Standards Institute, UnifAI Technology, and United Utilities. The Site-Agnostic AI Models for Water Quality and Safety project will use AI and data collected from low-cost sensors that continually monitor bacteria at 20 inland bathing sites. It aims to create a location-agnostic “out-of-the-box” AI model that does not need to be trained on localised data, to enable real-time monitoring of diverse bathing sites and predictive analytics to transform water quality management.
The Ofwat Innovation Fund is a key pillar in Ofwat’s mission to drive innovation that ensures the water sector is ready for the challenges of the future and results in better outcomes for customers and the environment. It is delivered by innovation prize experts Challenge Works (part of the Nesta group), in partnership with Arup and Isle Utilities.
To find out more about all 16 of the winners of the fifth Water Breakthrough Challenge or to discover previous winners, visit waterinnovation.challenges.org