Digital water meters can take Australian water utilities into the world of internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics. The potential is there for them to build more efficient processes, to enable new products and services to be offered, to defer expensive capital works, and for water conservation to be achieved. However, utilities are not mounting business cases with sufficient benefits to cover the project and operational costs. This study undertakes a literature review and interviews of industry experts in the search for unreported benefits that might be considered for inclusion in business cases. It identifies seventy-five possible benefits of which fifty-seven are classified as benefiting the water utility and forty are classified as benefiting customers (twenty-two benefit both). Many benefits may be difficult to monetize. Benefits to customers may have a small monetary benefit to the water utility but provide a significant benefit to customer satisfaction scores. However, for utilities to achieve these potential benefits, eight change enablers were identified as being required in their systems, processes, and resources. Of the seventy-five benefits, approximately half might be considered previously unreported. Finally, a taxonomy is presented into which the benefits are classified, and the enabling business changes for them to be realized are identified. Water utilities might consider the taxonomy, the benefits, and the changes required to enable the benefits when developing their business cases.

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Business cases promoting the introduction of digital water metering (DWM) have, to date, focused on a limited number of benefits, especially water savings, metering costs, occupational health and safety (OHS), and deferral of capital works. An earlier study by the authors catalogued 75 possible benefits and developed a taxonomy based on a literature review, interviews and water industry reports. The objective of the present study was to elicit the opinions of Australian water industry experts on the benefits, then use the opinions to form probability distributions which, in future work, could be used to model the value of DWM benefits. The study findings have implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accurately and stochastically model the benefits of DWM transformation programmes. Thematic analyses on the open ended responses scaled likelihood and estimated value of benefits into comparable units. We found 82% support for the benefits of DWM with only 6% disagreement and 12% non-commital; the savings value of cost of water benefits were predominately expected to range between 5% and 10% and much higher in some individual situations, while charges/operational costs benefits were predominately expected to range between 45% and 100%; and, moreover, we indicated how a risk-based range of project benefit could potentially be calculated. Opportunities for further investigations were identified.

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Key Takeaways Business cases often strain to identify enough benefits to cover costs of digital water metering (DWM), consisting of advanced metering infrastructure and data analytics. An Australian study in 2020 identified 77 benefits of DWM, potentially generating cost savings and customer satisfaction improvements. Modeling software makes projections of monetary savings over the DWM project life cycle and considers customer satisfaction improvements linked to DWM deployment. Leasing meters may provide lower entry costs, shifting risks to the supplier and avoiding lock‐in of today's technology for long periods to achieve acceptable returns on investment.