Standards Development

Scope

This document provides principles and guidelines for smart water management relating to drinking water, wastewater and stormwater systems and services.

The following are within the scope of this document:

a) General context;

b) Principles and guidelines for smart water management system design;

c) Operation and maintenance of smart water management system;

d) Principles and guidelines for smart water management system governance.

This document is applicable to all sizes of public or private water utilities, that want to design, develop, implement, operate and maintain smart water management system.

Purpose

Throughout the past years, governments, enterprises and researchers have shown increasing interest in incorporating digital and smart approaches, including sensor monitoring, real-time data transmitting, data processing and real-time controlling into water systems. The worldwide demand for water from the growing population, increasing urbanization and maintaining cost of aging infrastructure drive the growth of the smart water management market. The smart water management market was valued at USD 7.14 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach USD 13.81 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 12.31% during the forecast period.

With the development of smart water management, water utilities are facing increasing challenges for developing an appropriate digital strategy for water, wastewater and stormwater systems and service. Firstly, data silos and electro-mechanical rotating equipment with various communication protocols block systems integration and interoperability. Secondly, cyber-security and customer data protection are critical considerations when deploying smart water management. Thirdly, managing data for valuable information are key elements in designing and managing smart water system. Fourthly, adopting digital technologies can bring up human resources concerns related to skill gaps, workforce transition and change management. Digital maturity of water utilities is different but, in any case, they all need to have digital architecture and general guidelines to develop valuable systems and governance to adapt themselves to the changing environment and face these new challenges. Currently, there are some standards on data exchanging and data sharing related to smart city and smart community infrastructures, the standard of smart management in water and wastewater domain is still blank to be develop. This document provides principles and guidelines for smart water management relating to drinking water, wastewater and stormwater systems and services. It is intended to help water utilities to decrease operational expenditure, increase workforce efficiencies, increased customer engagement and satisfaction. It helps to guide a new generation of water utilities during their uptake of digital strategy and integration into water services adapted to their own context, as well as accelerate collaboration with other businesses at smart cities scale.