Next Generation Modern Water Master Planning for Water Utilities: Plan from the Future

Water master plans are a best management practice of both private and municipal water utilities. The master plan is a comprehensive, broad-based technical roadmap that documents the existing facilities data, investigations, assessments, and projections necessary to make decisions about the utility’s water system (e.g., capital improvements, policies and funding) for the next few decades. This important document is normally prepared by engineering consultants in close coordination with utility staff and other stakeholders. Sharing knowledge, expertise, and insights specific to the water utility’s system and its operations, they perform on-site tests and detailed condition assessments of their facilities, conduct desktop evaluations using computer modeling applications, project population growth and water demands, complete assessments of water sources, identify capacity requirements, and identify potential solutions to ensure future water needs can be met. The selected preferred options will achieve a balance of adequate, reliable water service with reasonable infrastructure costs and rates. These options comprise the capital improvement program, which translates water master plan findings into implemented projects and initiatives scheduled over the coming decades. Projects are prioritized based on risk, including impacts on the public, condition assessment findings, historic performance, resource sustainability, and engineering judgment. The planning horizon normally consists of short (0-to-5 years), medium (6- to-15 years) and long (16-to-25 years or more) terms. This Present-forward thinking and planning has been the predominant mode of developing master plans for water utilities. It provides a road map for supporting an infrastructure that meets present and future demands and creating a financial plan to fund capital and O&M needs. The master plan is updated regularly (normally every five years) to incorporate changing real-world conditions.

This conventional Present-forward master planning process basically maintains a linear water infrastructure (e.g., water treatment plant capacity expansion, additional pipes and storage tanks) to meet future regulatory requirements and growing population demands. Its dominant mode for existing infrastructure assets is “break/fix”: something breaks and we rally to fix it. This process operates on the premise that we can extrapolate future results, like O&M budget, from a well-understood and predictable pattern of past experience.

Recently, advances in digital technology are making it possible — and cost-effectively — to resolve water infrastructure issues, close the infrastructure funding gap and enable Future-back thinking and planning through a digital transformation. This future-back master planning becomes the critical element in the roadmap for the digital water utility.

Future-back thinking and planning begins with exploring and envisioning your organization’s likely future environment with your stakeholders, targeting the right time horizon. What do we want our water utility’s future state to look like — inclusive of both the evolution of our current business and the development of new ones (e.g., recycle business opportunities)? What will our existing and new customers value? Are we an owner-operator of infrastructure assets or a builder of healthy, thriving communities and economies? Are we in the business of selling water services, or improving lives? The well-known story of Apple’s transformation from a niche computer company to a consumer electronics behemoth and entertainment company is a case in point. In January 2007, the company changed its name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc., the same day it announced the iPhone. It signaled the realization that Apple didn’t have to be just a computer company; it could become a music company, a camera company, a lifestyle company, even a brick-and-mortar retailer — on its way to becoming the most valuable company of any kind.

Once you envision the portfolio of the future, you can assess where business-as-usual would likely lead you, then determine what you must do to not only fit into that environment but actively shape it to your needs so you can thrive in it. For example, turning static infrastructure into a living, dynamic (“smart”) digital infrastructure lets you see, hear and eventually speak to your buried water assets, helping to ensure operational continuity while optimizing infrastructure performance and resilience and delivering better services. It lets you effectively prevent infrastructure failure from happening rather than cure it when it does. For instance, an unusual reading for a pipe could indicate a potential leak, allowing for rapid action before costly damage occurs. Retrofitting existing infrastructure assets also lets you gain critical insights for improved decision making at minimal cost. Examples include retrofitting fire hydrants to monitor pressure and water quality (i.e., no need to replace the hydrant) and using SCADA and water billing data to monitor and control non-revenue water (NRW) and detect leaks.

The last step is to translate your vision into a long-term strategy, then walk it back to the present in the form of concrete capital improvement initiatives programmed and implemented the right way moving forward. For example, constructing buried tanks with parks, basketball courts and tennis courts on top of the buried roof to get more and better use out of the land. When execution is combined with vision, you can lead not to, but from the future, pivoting your water utility into a world you have discovered and helped to create.

Future-back master planning requires a seamless integration of digital technologies including GIS (e.g., asset visualization, management and maintenance), AI/ML (e.g., leak/defect detection and localization, virtual condition assessment, root cause analysis, demand projection), criticality analysis, network simulation (e.g., fire flow and water quality calculation), predictive analytics (e.g., asset failure prediction), and remote sensing (e.g., SCADA and sensors data). GIS plays a critical role in enabling and powering the digital twin. It is the foundation for integrating and interconnecting digital technologies and providing a human feedback loop through active sharing and collaboration. This is the essence of an strategy-led water infrastructure digital twin. It lets water utilities identify and fill a projected infrastructure improvement shortfall, reinvent their core business or develop a bold new vision for their enterprise as a whole. It lets them maximize their assets’ life cycles through sustainable infrastructure strategies and investments, making it possible to achieve the operational efficiencies and the future they envision while bettering their communities. It also gives them a better way to understand and evaluate their opportunities.

AquaTwin strategy-led, AI-powered simulation-driven self-service water infrastructure digital twin asset management software for ArcGIS Pro®

 A strategy-led digital twin delivers the means to transform operations and maintenance with actionable insights that drive improved business decisions. It has many applications across the water infrastructure lifecycle. It can help evaluate infrastructure capacity shortfalls under population growth and climate variability, instantly detect and isolate deficiencies, perform diagnostics and troubleshooting, predict outcomes to a much higher degree of accuracy and recommend corrective action. It can help determine ideal maintenance schedules, reduce the cost and risk of both unplanned asset downtime and scheduled but unnecessary maintenance procedures. It can aid in better identification of capital improvement projects, allowing the utility to spend more wisely on infrastructure, increasing efficiency, reducing life cycle costs, optimizing asset performance and useful life, improving revenue and overall business operations, better running and sustaining infrastructure, securing business continuity resilience, and ultimately better serving customers. A strategy-led digital twin also makes it possible to “experiment with the future” by exploring and comparing what-if scenarios safely and economically. It lets you innovate and validate like never before. The results can be transformative in their impacts.

 With the release of AquaTwin for ArcGIS Pro®, Aquanuity is fundamentally changing the way water utilities and their engineering consultants can use technology to plan, design and build safe, efficient, sustainable, resilient and smarter water infrastructure. The software ushers in a new paradigm shift in water master planning from present-forward planning to a strategy-led future-back planning. What’s more? It is designed with users in mind and supports the business models and needs of all water, wastewater, and storm water utilities. The result? A rich, enjoyable experience for everyone in the enterprise that redefines the standard for modern digital twin applications. It makes it faster and easier than ever before to interact with information and allows users to enjoy a more intuitive and visually engaging work experience. And since water utilities of all sizes have been using GIS (e.g., ArcGIS) and network modeling (e.g., EPANET) software for years to conduct present-forward master planning projects, they can instantly trade up to the power of future-back planning to chart their digital transformation journeys. These utilities can now visualize their future states, thoughtfully design infrastructure improvements to support their “to be” visions and turn those visions into realities. It is no longer difficult, nor costly, to do. It is no longer an option. It is an imperative for thriving in a better water future and making a lasting positive impact on your communities. To borrow the words of Steve Jobs, “The journey is the reward.”

 Design and engineering firms are uniquely positioned to provide their customers strategy-led water infrastructure digital twin master planning solutions. In doing so, they will help to create the digital water utility of the future and build better, smarter, safer, more sustainable and resilient infrastructures ... help water utilities drive strategic continuity and accelerate their digital transformations ... and leverage their infrastructure assets to own the future and create better communities.