Water Systems: AI-assisted planning for long-term water resilience

The UK water sector is facing unprecedented challenges. Climate change is driving more frequent and extreme weather events, including prolonged droughts and intense rainfall leading to floods. Population growth, particularly in urban areas, is increasing water demand, while ageing infrastructure contributes to leakage and inefficiencies. Meanwhile, industrial demand is rising, particularly in energy and technology sectors, requiring a more resilient approach to water systems planning.

 

Digital adaptive water systems planning

Traditional investment planning and network modelling tools struggle to keep pace with the growing complexity of the sector. Decision-making within utilities is often fragmented, with different teams working in silos, making it difficult to develop a unified, system-wide approach to investment planning. Without an integrated, whole-systems and adaptive data-driven approach, utilities struggle to adapt to an increasingly dynamic and uncertain decision landscape.

To address these challenges, BMA’s next-gen AI decision intelligence software, Decisio™, provides a structured, whole systems approach to water infrastructure investment planning. Unlike traditional hydraulic models, the Decisio™ platform delivers a comprehensive digital representation of raw water, potable water, and wastewater systems, integrating asset, operational, cost, financial, and engineering data - essentially creating a digital business twin of the entire water infrastructure. Through cloud-based multi-stakeholder access, the platform ensures that decision-making is no longer siloed but instead integrated across business units, promoting a more coordinated and strategic approach to water systems planning.

 

 

 

 

 

How Decisio™ addresses key water infrastructure challenges

 

 

 

Key capabilities of Decisio™ Water Systems Digital Business Twin

At its core, the Decisio™ Water Systems Digital Business Twin provides a node-level representation of the system, capturing network assets, their connectivity, and relationships. It is neither a hydraulic model nor a real-time digital twin, but it understands the capital and operational costs, as well as site and system-level constraints of water moving across the network.

Case Study: Pushing the boundaries of collaborative innovation

 

Yorkshire Water manages the collection, treatment and distribution of water to around 2 million homes throughout Yorkshire, supplying 1.3 billion litres of treated water every day, as well as collecting, treating and disposing of about one billion litres of wastewater safely back into the environment. This is made possible with an asset base of more than 700 water and sewage treatment works, 62,000 miles of water and sewerage mains and 120 reservoirs across Yorkshire.

In 2021, BMA collaborated with Yorkshire Water’s asset and resources planning team to improve the resilience of its system after having had various challenges at one of their largest water treatment works. The insufficient resilience could have led to half a million customers without water. The Board wanted additional reassurance and a better understanding of the interventions required to improve the resilience of the system.

The solution

Through our next-gen AI intelligence software, Decisio™, Yorkshire Water were able to identify a clear set of new interventions (including new connectivity schemes and uplifts). These allowed the source-to-tap system around the treatment works to not only become resilient to unplanned events for a period of up to 4 weeks, but also provided new potential network configurations with a lower OPEX. During Phase 2, Yorkshire Water were able to identify and unlock the hidden potential of the network and identify further investment options that traditional engineering approaches are not able to consider. Over the past three years, the platform has been further used by Yorkshire Water to support systems thinking around WRMP investments, and more recently to secure Ofwat’s approval at PR24 for the new £300m West Yorkshire water treatment works, which includes approx £20m in development expenditure unlocked at final determination.

The impact

• Provided Board assurance on cost and benefit of risk mitigation to improve system resilience
• Auto-generated thousands of new asset investment options including identifying up to 30% CAPEX efficiency
• Delivered an enduring, new adaptive whole-systems capability for future use
• Unlocked regulatory funding for a new £300m whole-life cost water treatment works

 

 

 

Case Study: Scottish Water’s Digital Planning Transformation

 

Scottish Water provides drinking water to 2.46 million households and 150,000 business customers in Scotland. Every day it supplies 1.34 billion litres of drinking water and takes away 847 million litres of wastewater from customers’ properties and treats it before returning it to the environment.

Scottish Water had faced a critical challenge: climate change and population shifts threatened a potential supply-demand deficit greater than 250Ml/d by 2050. This wasn’t just about addressing current needs - it required rethinking how water system planning works at a fundamental level. Scottish Water needed a comprehensive way of assessing the optimal pathway to reduce the supply-demand deficit that would take into account all interventions and water system resilience.

 

The solution

BMA collaborated with Scottish Water’s visionary leadership to help them make successful data driven decisions about their critical infrastructure investments. Scottish Water successfully implemented the Decisio™ Water Systems Digital Business Twin across all 189 water resource zones. Scottish Water is now in direct control of their digital whole-systems planning capability, enabling them to run scenarios independently and make data-driven decisions themselves about which investments to prioritise and pull forward into the next spending review period. Overall, the Water Systems solution has enabled Scottish Water to develop an optimised network strategy that delivers an efficient, resilient water supply while addressing future challenges and opportunities.

The impact

• Developed investment plans to reduce supply demand risk from 280 MLD expected in 2050 to just over 25 MLD by 2050, removing substantial risk through each planning period
• Integrated planned and auto-generated investment options to reduce unmet demand risks over the upcoming regulatory planning periods
• Identified additional investments needed to ensure resilience against future growth and climate change
• Supported prioritisation of investments for inclusion in SR27 (2027-33) investment plan, in the context of the long-term strategy

 

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“ The Decisio™ platform has given us the capability to combine information from multiple sources, run multiple scenarios and understand the optimum combination and timing of demand reduction and supply side options to address our long-term supply challenges. ”

Andy Dunbar

General Manager, Scottish Water