Digital transformation of urban water systems: smart meters and data-driven approaches for informed demand management strategies

Speaker: Andrea Cominola, TU - Berlin

Planning and management strategies for urban water systems are key for meeting future demands under population growth, urbanization, changing socio-economic conditions, emerging technologies, and climate change. Demandside management is fundamental to complement supply-side interventions and meet future demands, pursue conservation/efficiency targets, and reduce utilities’ costs. Yet, understanding how water demands may be modeled and evolve across their relevant spatial and temporal scales remains a fundamental challenge.

In this talk, we will see how the technological development and diffusion of advanced metering technologies, intelligent sensors, increasing data availability and analytics, and data-driven modelling are opening up new opportunities to advance methods and applications for urban water demand analysis, modelling, and management. These tools ultimately support and innovate traditional utilities’ operation and planning and management strategies.