Smart monitoring of infrastructure asset health and performance in the drinking water distribution systems

A growing world population will require an unprecedented demand for fresh water.

With uneven global distribution, climate change and ageing pipeline infrastructure, water utilities will face this complex challenge while needing to replace and maintain their water distribution network.

Digital solutions will assist drinking water producers in this challenge by increasing digital maturity in terms of automated data management and decision support.

Development of smart and robust monitoring technologies, together with a comprehensive examination of the deterioration of, and maintenance management systems for, drinking water pipelines in the context of infrastructure aging, is essential to ensure long and trouble-free operations.

The SMART-Infra project will accelerate this digital transformation in drinking water distribution by investigating which data to measure and how to manage this data.

Monitoring technologies will be evaluated with respect to infrastructure health and performance and these technologies will be enhanced with custom AI tools.

SMART-Infra’s vision is to support drinking water producers to: (i) assess their infrastructure state, (ii) predict disruptions of the network due to material failure or decreased water quality, and (iii) select the optimum material for a given application.

SMART-Infra supports the achievement of the UN sustainability goals at the water utilities by contributing to the quality, reliability, sustainability and resilience of the infrastructure by upgrading technology capabilities and increased resource-use efficiency.

SMART-Infra will collaborate throughout the water value chain and promote international collaboration through its consortium, its reference group and its dissemination channel where all water actors are represented at national and international levels.