Much of the media coverage focused on only a handful of chair Sir Jon Cunliffe’s 88 recommendations, including a new regulator with responsibilities previously covered by other organisations, more consumer advocacy and new regional water authorities.
But beyond the organisational reshuffle, the report also contains plenty of opportunities for those in the engineering sector to help solve the crisis the country’s water industry finds itself in, with increasing amounts of polluting sewage being released into our rivers and seas, ageing infrastructure and rising household bills.
One of the key recommendations is to appoint a chief engineer to the board of the regulator in England and Wales, to strengthen oversight of infrastructure resilience and asset health. That chief engineer would keep the water industry up to date on the latest relevant developments in engineering, and help avoid some of the catastrophic physical failures of infrastructure that have blighted the sector in the recent past.
To do so, the report advocates for greater use of digitalisation, automation and third-party assurance when operators are monitoring water quality and flows. It recommends using real-time data from storm overflows and continuous water quality monitors to provide a steady stream of information, enabling water companies to make better decisions. AI and machine learning could be harnessed to help parse through that increased data flow.
AI cannot solve everything, however. Mechanical engineers are crucial for designing and implementing the physical systems that enable automation and monitoring, the report suggests, including the design of robust sensors and probes for water quality, flow and pressure in harsh environments. Ongoing checks could be made easier, it continues, by using robotic crawlers to investigate deep into pipelines, underwater autonomous vehicles to go down into reservoirs and drones to survey difficult-to-reach equipment.
Engineering remains crucial to the continued improvement of the water sector. “Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) are a crucial part of the solution to one of the main issues with our water infrastructure – the inability to cope with cycles of extreme heat and rainfall that we’re now seeing more of due to climate change,” says Martin Lambley, global product manager for urban climate resilience at drainage and piping manufacturer Wavin.
SuDS can capture surface water for reuse in the community or release it back into the environment at a controlled rate. “There’s a breadth of options available to developers and local authorities, including high-tech humanmade rooftop attenuation systems or natural elements,” says Lambley. “The right approach is a ‘grey-green’ strategy that combines humanmade and natural solutions.”
Lambley points out that “there are already effective and powerful engineering solutions out there that will help us move towards a healthier relationship with water. Sadly, these are relegated to the back pages of the report, well away from the headlines.”
Others agree. “While many of the recommendations from the review are welcomed, it’s not possible to engineer the right solutions to our water crisis if we look at the water industry in isolation, as the review has done,” says David Palmer, director of water at consulting engineers Buro Happold.
Palmer points out that “water is part of a much bigger cycle: it must be linked with agriculture, urban and transport infrastructure run-off pollution, and the impacts of development, as the Chartered Institution of Water and Environment Management argues.”
The report works on the basis of a flawed premise, Palmer argues. “There’s a current perception that there is not enough water in the UK, but this is a misleading narrative,” he says. “There is enough water, it just isn’t equally spread across regions. To tackle this distribution challenge, we will need more reservoirs, which are planned, and [to] consider efficiency distribution across some of our regions.”
At the same time, reducing demand through other engineering tricks is vital. One area that the industry is already in agreement on is the importance of keeping track of water use.
“Smart metering is key to reducing water demand,” says Palmer, who says that adding meters to all water points is important because it can help encourage a 10-15% reduction in use. “The mandatory metering recommended by the review is therefore welcomed and vital if we are all to change our relationship with water,” says Palmer. “However, the public must be educated that metering will not result in a reduction of what the public pay. We need to understand that the water we use is the water we pay for – the same as for energy.”
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.