With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities infrastructure, and advanced modeling tools, a digital transformation is underway in the water industry. We caught up with Bob Mankowski, Bentley’s vice president of digital cities, at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure Conference in Singapore. He weighed in on the trends and technologies creating buzz in the market.
WATERWORLD: When it comes to digitalization in the water industry, the concept of digital twins seems to be gaining momentum. How can water and wastewater utilities leverage this technology?
BOB MANKOWSKI: First, you don’t want to create a digital twin just for the sake of having a digital twin. It’s got to be a solution to a problem. That said, there are different types of problems that water and wastewater utilities might address by applying digital twins in their project work. For example, it might just be gaining visibility across the various data silos you have and then being able to have information at your fingertips to help you make better decisions.
WW: Is there an example that you could share?
BM: We have an example being showcased here at YII, Águas do Porto in Portugal. It’s an amazing project where the project team created a digital twin of essentially the entire hydrologic cycle. They performed meteorological forecasting and ran several meteorological models. They analyze the stormwater runoff and collection; they have a potable water distribution model in there, wastewater collection, through treatment and into the discharges into the river, which ultimately leads to the coast. They created a digital twin, and they have sensor data and SCADA data coming in. Then they use hydraulic models, numerical models, to predict what’s going to happen in the near future and create operational dashboards containing key performance indicators.
WW: What was the driver behind that project?
BM: There were several drivers, including system reliability and ensuring fewer disruptions. There were also efficiency gains in terms of their operations. Águas do Porto has a digital twin that it uses to operate the system and gain insights into how it’s operating. If they make changes, they can see what will happen and how differently the system will operate.
WW: Do digital twins offer subsurface capabilities?
BM: What’s very challenging about the subsurface is that you can’t directly observe it; it’s buried infrastructure. But we have records of what we believe is down there. And, we have sample data of the geology or hydrology because we can conduct borehole tests and so forth. A subsurface digital twin takes the information available and brings it together into a more easily accessed and visualized medium of the digital twin. It’s not trying to suggest that it’s a perfect picture of what’s underground because we know our records are not necessarily perfect. In a water utility, we typically have only 2D locations, and in a wastewater utility we have a 2D horizontal position and an attribute of how deep the upstream and downstream inverts are. So, you have this sort of 2.5D data. We created some tools to take that data, transform it into real 3D models with the idea that we can now at least visualize what we think is down there — and visualize it in new ways. We can combine it with a surface model of a digital twin of the city to give it additional context and understand what these things are. We can also include the geology and the hydrology of the soil and rock, so we understand the context in which these subsurface utilities exist.
WW: We often hear talk of 4D models. What is meant by 4D?
BM: 4D is physics. It’s space and time. You have 3D space, and you have the one dimension of time. People in the infrastructure industry will also talk about 5D, which adds a dimension of cost; and 6D, which adds a dimension of project lifecycle information to the model. At Bentley, we focus on 4D because those are the fundamental properties of space and time. The 4D aspect also is important because assets change over time. So, your digital twin also has to be updated on a periodic basis. The frequency might vary depending on the asset and what your goals of the digital twin are. That fourth D of time is there to illustrate that you must have the tools and processes to keep up with the change in the asset and the asset information.
WW: You talk about the idea of “federating” data systems. Can you explain?
BM: To explain the concept of federation, I use the analogy of the United States. We’re 50 independent states but we have a federal government that has rules for all of us. Nonetheless, we still maintain our independence as individual states and have unique rules and laws associated with that. The same idea applies to federation of data systems where you have, for example, a work order management system from any variety of vendors; you have various different asset management systems out there for water and wastewater; you’ll have laboratory information systems; you’ll have GIS; and you might have hydraulic modeling systems. The idea with digital twins is that you’re not trying to dictate one standard system for all of this. That would never happen, and we don’t want it to happen. All these applications are specialized for what they do and they’re really good. Rather, what you want to do is join them up so you have a more holistic view of the asset and how it’s operating, what its current state is, and how it might operate in the future. So that’s what federation is: linking systems together.
WW: Is federation of data as difficult as it sounds?
BM: It’s challenging and it’s not an easy problem to solve — but it’s possible to solve it. Getting everyone to use one giant system is never going to happen, even within a single water utility, never mind the city that wants a view of its water assets, electric assets, communications assets, gas assets, and so forth. But, understanding what is in a particular street from all these different departments and private organizations is another level of federation, getting subsets of data from each individual department and owner and coalescing it into a holistic view of the city from a city context.
WW: When it comes to water and wastewater utilities, what is the state of adoption of these digital solutions?
BM: That’s a great question. I would say within the United States, we are seeing many early adopters and some of the large utilities exploring these solutions and seeing how they can help them increase their efficiencies, reduce their risk, reduce costs, and improve their levels of service.
WW: Why do you think adoption isn’t more rapid?
BM: I think there are a number of factors. In the U.S., for example, we have a very fragmented water market. There are many small to medium-sized utilities that might not have the time or money to look into these things, never mind implement them. They have other competing priorities. When it comes to actually implementing these technologies, there is still a gap between the engineers and the operators. They don’t necessarily understand each other’s worlds and don’t work as closely as they could. With our WaterOPS application, we are bridging that gap between engineering and operations by getting operators to understand the value of hydraulic models in helping them make decisions and getting engineers to understand what it’s like to operate the water system rather than just design it. I think helping to close that knowledge gap is important, and that will ultimately spur adoption. WW
