K-water Super Technology Utility Digital Transformation

This White Paper was created in collaboration with K-water. Register with Bluefield Research for a complimentary download of this analysis. 

Municipal water utilities globally face a series of shared challenges including water scarcity, extreme weather due to climate change, aging infrastructure, and workforce shortages. Digital transformation promises to equip utilities with a series of tools to navigate these issues.

Specifically, the use of digital twins to anticipate water disaster management, Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimize drinking water treatment plant operation, and smart water networks for reducing non-revenue water (NRW) can play a vital role for improving utility performance.

K-water has demonstrated the use of these technologies both in Korea and abroad through self-developed software systems combined with an end-to-end service offering, delivering major improvements in resource management, operating costs, and customer satisfaction that may appeal to large urban water utilities in Europe and the U.S.

The Big Picture:

The multifaceted shifts and risks impacting utilities calls for improved decision-making across a range of operational areas. From resource management in the case of extreme weather events in the short term, to longer-term asset management decisions to handle aging infrastructure, water industry personnel must constantly process a vast quantity of data for increasingly important decisions with major impacts on municipal infrastructure. Even more challenging is the increasing financial costs of these decisions within tight budgets, both to remain compliant with evolving regulations, and to sustain sufficient service levels for customers. All of these factors add up to an increasingly difficult environment for utilities to meet their targets, whether they are environmental, financial, or operational.