The European Commission-funded SmartH2O project, in which Thames Water will play a key role, is now getting under way.
The main aims of the project are to study, understand and modify consumer behaviour to achieve quantifiable water savings by raising consumer awareness and by the design and implementation of dynamic pricing schemes.
Thames Water is one of two water utilities project partners which will deploy and use the SmartH2O platform in two case studies, in two different European contexts: a megacity - London, UK and a sparsely populated area - Canton Ticino, in Switzerland. Thames and Swiss-based Società Elettrica Sopracenerina will manage the test sites where the SmartH2O solution will be deployed
The aim of the three year project is the development of a modular and scalable ICT platform that integrates a series of components in order to provide water utilities with an effective tool for the design and implementation of water demand management policies to promote water usage efficiency.
Thames Water has been running a trial on smart metering technology (Fixed Network Trials – FNT) since 2011 with the objective of understanding the benefits for customers and the operational benefits of deploying a smart metering infrastructure covering full District Metered Areas (DMAs).
Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI) equipment has been installed to collect frequent meter readings (15 min intervals) from all connections within the DMA. The main objectives are to obtain an accurate water balance as well as confirming the business case benefits of a large scale roll out.
Two different fixed network technologies are being used in the Thames trial: advanced fixed network supplied by Arqiva/Sensus and a conventional fixed network supplied by Vennsys/HomeRider.
Vennsys Limited is a joint venture between Veolia Water UK (51%), H2O Water Services (34%) and Mace (15%) which is providing Managed Metering Services for Thames Water over a nine year contract running to March 2020.
The experiment covers 5 DMAs: 2 in London, 2 in Reading and 1 in Swindon with a total number of properties of 5,000. Total number of meters that have been installed are around 2,500.
The aim of the SmartH2O project is to develop an ICT platform to:
- Understand and model consumers’ current behaviour, based on historical and real-time water usage data
- Predict how consumer behaviour can be influenced by various water demand management policies: water savings campaigns, social awareness campaigns, to dynamic water pricing schemes
- Raise the awareness of water consumers on their current water usage habits and their lifestyle implications and stimulate them to reduce water use
- Promote the adoption of novel ICT solutions in water management companies
Scientific objectives of the project include the development of an innovative method to learn and develop models of user behaviour integrating quantitative data, obtained by smart sensors and qualitative data, collected through online social participation application.
SmartH2O will also cover the development, implementation and validation of a simulation model which is able to reproduce the behaviour of whole districts of water users based on selected user profiles.
Thames Water WUL is the WP8 lead (Business development) on the project and will provide contributions in most of the SmartH2o work packages.
The project is ultimately expected to demonstrate how social awareness and dynamic pricing instruments can modify consumers’ behaviour on water use.
The project has an open source approach to software development and will announce the availability of open source software when it becomes available –SmartH2o will collect and publish in open data format data sets collected and anonymized from consumption metering experiments.
The project is being led by IDSIA, a research institute of SUPSI (the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland. Other consortium partners include Politecnico di Milano (Italy), The University of Manchester (UK), The European Institute for Participatory Media (DE), SetMobile Srl (RO) and Moonsubmarine Ltd (UK).
Project progress can be followed at http://www.smarth2o-fp7.eu and also on Facebook (http://facebook.com/smartH2Oproject), Twitter (@smartH2Oproject) and Google+ (http://goo.gl/zOJi5i)
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