Revealing Unreported Benefits of Digital Water Metering: Literature Review and Expert Opinions

Abstract

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.

Expert Opinion Valuation Method to Quantify Digital Water Metering Benefits

“…Overall, 67.5% agreed or strongly agreed with the benefits proposed, another 14.5% offered muted agreement while only 6% disagreed and 12% offered no opinion. The authors' previous literature review [41] identified sources of benefits of DWM, including the outcomes of academic research and reviews, which collectively reflect this strong level of support. Water savings and operational savings expressed by the experts were consistent with findings by researchers and practitioners in Australia [5,40] and overseas [6].…”

“…Insight into successful deployments are reported in published case studies, unpublished reports and local press reports [6,10,24,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39], as well as general reviews of DWM trials and implementations [11,40]. The literature review that preceded this study identified 75 benefits, many of them previously unreported, and catalogued them in a taxonomy [41]. Well-known benefits included identification of concealed leaks within properties, improved water balance analysis, meter reading cost savings, reduced mis-reads and estimated readings, reduced occupational health and safety issues, and more detailed water consumption data for network planning.…”

Rethinking the Framework of Smart Water System: A Review

“…In this study, the benefit layer mainly contains four aspects including prolonging the asset life cycle, increasing energy sustainability, optimizing pressure and water quality, obtaining real-time water consumption shown in Figure 9 below. According to the benefits taxonomy by [71][72][73], the first two can be considered as business benefits while the third one belongs to shared benefits. The last benefit is classified as customer benefits.…”

Machine Learning and Data Analytic Techniques in Digital Water Metering: A Review

“…To achieve these goals, we performed a systematic literature review in the field. Despite previous review studies having been conducted in this field [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], none-to the best of our knowledge-have been conducted from the perspective of ML and DA techniques. We believe that by providing a focused investigation of the literature, this review will benefit ML and DA practitioners as well as researchers in the water industry who are working on digital water metering and closely related fields.…”