Insights on water digitalization

Digitization turns physical assets, readings and records into usable digital data, for example with sensors, tags and communications. Digitalization uses that data to change how a plant or network is run, through remote monitoring and control, analytics and faster decisions.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. A system that collects data from PLCs and RTUs, shows it to operators, stores history, raises alarms and allows supervisory commands to be sent back to the field.

Programmable Logic Controller. A rugged industrial computer that reads inputs from sensors, runs control logic in a repeating scan and drives outputs such as pump starters and valves.

Remote Terminal Unit. A field device at a remote site, such as a reservoir or pump station, that gathers inputs and sends them to SCADA over radio, cellular or other links. RTUs are typically designed to run on little power and to tolerate unreliable communications.

Human-Machine Interface. The screen or software through which an operator sees the state of a process and issues commands, whether on a local panel or a SCADA workstation.

Industrial Internet of Things. Connecting industrial sensors, equipment and systems to networks and data platforms for monitoring and analytics, usually alongside existing control systems rather than in place of them.

An open low-power wide-area network protocol built on LoRa radio. It carries small messages from battery-powered devices over long distances in licence-exempt spectrum and is not suited to control loops.

Radio-frequency identification. A tag on an asset holds an identifier that a reader can detect without line of sight. The identifier links to a record of the asset's location, inspections and maintenance history.

Non-revenue water. Water put into a distribution system that is not billed. It includes real losses (leakage), apparent losses (metering error, unauthorized use) and unbilled authorized use such as flushing.

Seawater reverse osmosis. Desalination that forces seawater through semi-permeable membranes at high pressure to produce fresh water and a concentrated brine.

Brackish water reverse osmosis. The same principle applied to feed water of lower salinity than seawater, so it generally operates at considerably lower pressure.

Moving bed biofilm reactor. A biological treatment process in which biomass grows as a film on small plastic carriers kept in motion in the tank, increasing treatment capacity for a given volume.

Membrane bioreactor. Activated sludge treatment combined with membrane filtration in place of secondary clarifiers, producing high-quality effluent in a compact footprint.

Oxidation-reduction potential, measured in millivolts. It indicates how oxidizing or reducing the water is, and is used to monitor disinfection and certain biological and chemical processes.

Total dissolved solids, usually in mg/L. It is often estimated from conductivity and used to track feed and product water quality, particularly in RO systems.

Maintenance planned from the measured condition of equipment, rather than from a fixed calendar or after a failure. It relies on data such as vibration, temperature, current and pressure.

A digital model of an asset or process that is kept in step with real-world data. It supports monitoring, simulation and what-if analysis, and can range from a simple model to a hydraulic model fed by live measurements.