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Water Management Digitalisation (RP2023)

(A.) Policy and legislation

(A.1) Policy objectives

Global water challenges are critical for our society, including alterations in water quality and availability, the frequency of floods and droughts due to environmental/climatic changes, pollution trends and increased competition in water uses. Currently, these cause serious problems in 11% of the EU territory and this is expected to increase to 30% by 2030[34]. Moreover, the usage of water is a key enabler for urban and rural urban/industrial activities that is expected to increase by 55% in 2050[35],[36]. It is fundamental to improve integrated water resource protection and management in the man-made or natural environments by addressing integrated water and wastewater management, water reuse, circular economy, water system monitoring and reporting, pollution reduction and prevention, smart irrigation, resilience in the field of floods and droughts, leakage reduction and prevention, water governance, and awareness raising of the true value of water by all stakeholders.

For these reasons, it is essential to develop and implement robust, smart, cost-effective, efficient and tailored water management systems, solutions and multi-sectoral governance models in Europe and globally. Advanced digital technologies comprise transversal common topics: digital twins for the processes within the water sector as well as for the management of the sector actions/operations and decision-making, big data-analytics, data sharing, privacy management, real-time and near-real-time monitoring, sensors, smart devices, decision support systems and water management tools, IoT, cloud and fog computing platforms, edge analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, algorithms, augmented reality and simulation tools, image and streaming data processing capabilities, reporting and consumer awareness tools and applications, cyber-security, system interoperability and standardisation solutions. These networked, intelligent systems help make better intertwin between water and their interrelated domains (e.g. energy). This is a relevant aspect due to the infrastructure's interrelation permit to replicate and transfer operational and managerial decision-making procedures. As an example a challenge in this regards is to avoid unnecessary water losses and minimize the consumption of resources.

Since 2007, the organisation, infrastructure and management of environmental data has been standardised through the INSPIRE Directive (Directive 2007/2/EC), but implementation is lagging behind, in particular many efforts in thematic domains, such as data related water management are ongoing to improve standardisation for interoperability and to enhance  sustainable digitalisation.

The 2019 European Green Deal (COM(2019) 640) recognises the potential of digitalisation to achieve the environment and climate aims and the necessity to explore sustainable digital technologies as essential enablers of the changes needed for a just green transition. Reference is made to digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G, cloud and edge computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) as having the potential to accelerate and maximise the impact of policies to protect the environment and to address climate change (COM(2019) 640, p.)

The Zero Pollution (ZP) initiative and ZP Action Plan “Towards Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil” (COM(2021) 400) announces a number of flagship initiatives of the Commission which will encourage the sustainable deployment of digital solutions and start an exchange of good practices. It fosters digitalisation of water sector to reach zero pollution ambition that for water. The vision and the key priorities in conjunction with the ICT4Water cluster - a community of 65 EU-funded research and innovation projects has been explicitly characterized in the Commission Staff Working Document ‘On Digital solutions for zero pollution’ (SWD(2021) 140, see p.25-26).  

The green and digital transitions can offer new opportunities for achieving environmental objectives provided that the environmental risks stemming from digitalisation are managed. Many such cases already exist and 25 of them have been illustrated in the Staff Working Document “Digital Solutions for Zero Pollution”. These examples represent only a small amount of all digital solutions for zero pollution. However, green digital transition is not possible without standardisation. The key elements need standardisation and interoperability. Specially, those technologies that are related to e.g. digital wins, data visualisation and dissemination, for smartening water management in creating smart resilient cities and communities, to manage eHealth and environmental pollution of water, use of smart sensors, IoT in water monitoring, optimisation of water sector operations by employing e.g., Machine Learning, use of Augmented Reality applications for water, etc.

The ICT4Water cluster is a hub for EU-funded research and innovation projects developing digital solutions for the water sector[37]. Since January 2018 the cluster is led by EASME/REA. The cluster supports its members in exchanging information and best practices, disseminating and exploiting project outputs, contributing to define digital water strategies and to policy development in digital and water domain. The cluster has 65 member projects, financed by Horizon 2020, the LIFE programme, the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and the Climate-KIC’s Pathfinder Programme. In the context of the cluster, several studies and reports on digital water have been published in previous years. Of the EU-funded projects, three main digital solution types, data driven intelligence, smart sensors/drones and models/simulation account for the 67% of the ICT technologies used so far. While there is an increase of digital adoption in water, the sector still lags behind other industries in integrating new, smart technologies into the whole water cycle and ecosystem. The interoperability and the standardisation are the issues for digitalisation of water sector. Currently, the cluster, with its seven action groups, among them Action Group (AG) on Smart water data interoperability and standardisation, collaborates with ETSI, and has worked on the SAREF extension for water as well as the use of the ETSI NGSI-LD specification to provide interoperable cross-domains data exchange within the project use cases.  Currently, this AG is focused on the extensions of SAREF4WATR ontology at different water value chains (e.g. industrial symbiosis, risk management, climate change and water quality monitoring).  Projects have demonstrated the relevance of the NGSI-LD meta model and interface definition to handle Digital Twin representations of complex systems (such as water distribution networks). This directly contributed to an ETSI group report on the Digital Twins topic while these interfaces have also been identified by the International Data Spaces organisation as enablers of the new data spaces economy, which are expected to foster the emergence of the water data spaces to interlink EU infrastructures and economy.

(A.2) EC perspective and progress report

The European Commission is working towards the definition of long-term regulatory strategy concerning the adoption of smart water technologies in coordination with relevant stakeholders and standard organisations, to ensure smooth digitalisation of water services over the next decade.

Data are the centrepiece of the digital agenda. Digitalisation has already helped generate, share, manage and re-use data more efficiently but latest technologies offer radically new solutions, which are not yet commonplace.

The water sector is living a revolution in their infrastructure towards the digitalization and the adoption of novel digital technologies (e.g. edge computing, Big Data, semantic interoperability, continuum computing, etc.). Indeed, water sector is moving to the Industry 4.0 paradigm to ensure the commitments of EU water directives in drinking water, water quality, bathing quality, and groundwater quality. Moreover, the application of novel digital technologies will also pave the way to the commitment of green deal directive in terms of efficiency of resources and finally, impacting on the adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

Under this paradigm shift, standardisation has also produced a change in the water industry minds. The water sector, immersed in the adoption of private standards, has evolved to the adoption of open standards for water management and monitoring (even for physical or digital aspects). In this regards, newer semantic interoperable standards using SAREF4WATR and FIWARE Smart-Data-Models based on ETSI NGSI-LD have permitted the common representation of water data across systems. Complementary, the generation of context-brokers based on the ETSI GS CIM 009 specification opens the innovation towards the adoption of common reference digital architectures. The combination of both aspects, open the way towards the adoption of newer technological wave in Open Data Spaces.  The Smart Data Models initiative offer standardised data models for water management based on the ETSI GS CIM 009 specification.

However, there are still some gaps and challenges to cover towards making water sector open and transparent. Indeed, interoperability and data standardisation require for their large-scale adoption and the generation of open and linked curated water data sets to sustain newer digital innovations. This aspect will remove the generated barriers in information exchange caused by the lived fragmentation and heterogeneity of digital water infrastructures. Considering water data exchange, there is real evidence on the interrelation of water domain with their interrelated domains (e.g. energy, climate, land-use, etc.) demonstrated through projects like SIM4NEXUS. This will permit to establish balanced policy and decision-making actions and also transfer some operational actions into water infrastructures. Moreover, it also will permit to transfer and replicable decision-making tools and strategies between domains. The proliferation of AI driven tools has put on evidence the need to create trustworthy and transparent models. These aspects are currently available in the recently published EU Data Strategy and Artificial Intelligence Act. Subsequently, there is a need to establish the basis to adopt those directives. For that, main gap is the lack of data sovereignty and non-discrimination algorithms to support this change. All of these aspects highlight the lack of newer digital business models able to make the transition from traditional models towards data centred models.

EU needs to move towards the generation of common data places and their sustainable governance to enable not only free-flow of information but also the elaboration of digital data spaces to share datasets and knowledge at cross-domain. Under this vision, EU needs to reduce the legislative and policy-making gaps that exist on data sharing across different countries (Data Governance Act, COM(2020) 767). This aspect will facilitate a more cohesive EU in terms of data transparency and data democracy. These aspects applied into the water sector will permit to unlock organizations and people potential to generate AI driven innovations from water sector. Therefore, it will permit to introduce social innovations in water management, water quality management, and other relevant water value chains and domains.

Another key aspect in the Water Framework Directive towards the incorporation of Earth Observation and data-driven models as a part of the water technologies to monitor water resources and quality. A strategy and standardisation in this regard will permit to open up the proliferation of standardized data-driven tools capable of improving existing monitoring methods protected under a standardized umbrella.

Finally, while some open ICT standards cover some horizontal (e.g. water reuse and recycling across sectors) and vertical aspects of the water sector (from monitoring to data visualization), gaps remain in the standardisation of water data manipulation, knowledge generation and smart water markets. Overcoming these obstacles in the coming years would allow the adoption of technologies to rip the benefits from Smart water networks.

In the view of the available standards, there are the following gaps that can contribute to the Green Deal Transition and widely documented in ICT4Water Cluster report on “Digitalisation in the water sector– joint policy recommendations from the DW2020 projects”. The gaps have been divided in the following subgroups:  

  • Technological. (i) the lack of citizen empowerment to elaborate standards in order to increase their adoption and acceptance; (ii) water market fragmentation due to lacks of standardisation and speed of innovation; (iii) slow progress in the transition to adopt open-source digital solutions for water management; (iv) the need to adopt the “agile standardisation” changing the paradigm from classical standardisation towards market/stakeholders driven standardisation.
  • Economic. (i) small water sector market difficulties the generation of a digital market exclusively; (ii) harsh environments inside water sector (e.g. wastewater) slows the generation of disruptive technology adoption (e.g. thin electronics or similar).
  • Social. (i) there is a lack of newer social awareness and governance methodologies and paradigms; (ii) Digital literacy within water utilities and administration is oftentimes insufficient.
  • Regulatory. (i) Security concept in is not sufficiently integrated in the EU policy framework; (ii) there is a need to strengthen data regulation across countries to facilitate data sharing and free-flow of information; (iii) the relation between standards and regulation framework is not clear.
  • Environmental. there is a need for mainstream Zero Pollution and Nexus regulation to generate sustainable uses of the resources inside the water sector;.

In a digitalized water market, the speed of innovations exceeds current standardisation capabilities (in time). So, keeping the same approach will lead to a non-standardised market where individual players will adopt individual solutions or others led by main players in the market. Therefore, a complementary approach should be promoted and encouraged to cope with this situation. An early pre-standardisation, agile standardisation, activity should allow to identify of new data models from emerging markets and innovation projects (e.g. (R+D  European projects) in a cross-domain approach. An agile pre-standardisation resource, should be also recommended to be used for the early moments of new markets or innovations considering the market speed especially for European R+D. This resource detects new needs, finds actual early adopter implementations, and creates an agile pre-standardisation approach that incentive other users to not reinvent the wheel. The time span for this agile pre-standardisation should be days/weeks instead of the tenths of months or year for current standardisation processes. An example of a viable approach to this is Smart Data Models Program (https://smartdatamodels.org). The results of the pre-standardisation activity should be an input for a final classical standardisation. 

(A.3) References 

Other relevant references:

(B.) Requested actions

The requested actions towards digitalisation of the water sector and implementation of ICT were defined in the scope of the  ICT4Water Cluster:

Action 1: Guidelines for the definition of Open Water Data Spaces, powered by IoT technologies and standards, which contributes to decentralised, circular water and information flow. The concept of the Open Water Data Spaces was expected to be developed in the framework of ICT4Water Cluster running projects. Many standards organisations such as ETSI, CEN & CENELEC, AIOTI, OGC, OpenFog, BVDA, FIWARE Foundation, Water Europe[38] are expected to contribute in coordination with the EC.

Action 2: Include Zero Pollution and Nexus aspects into Digital water standardisations. Newer digital and physical standards should cover the interlink between water and interrelated infrastructures. As an example of agriculture, agricultural sectorial directives should be aligned with WFD or groundwater directives. In terms of data exchange and digital standards and practices, agricultural practices and strategies (planning, operational, etc) should be in harmony with (or support the elaboration of) water related strategies (win-win strategies) (DW2020, 2022).

Action 3: Enhance data sharing trustworthiness. The solution to deploy must support security of data and support non-repudiable and unambiguous agreements, the integration of privacy concerns in the development of the corresponding data platforms and data-sharing applications, and the integration of security and privacy requirements during the deployment of the platforms.

Action 4: Definition of open data models and open data through interoperable platforms. The first steps as a policy decision are made by the EC. Then SDOs have to define the architectures, data models, ontologies, standard interfaces and protocols to allow data sharing, platforms integration and interoperability. This can be enhanced by the EU policies and EU data spaces that foster the wider use of free open data exchange und standardisation platforms (e.g. FIWARE).

Action 5: Incentives for the adoption of Open Data standards, in order to be able to provide information in a transparent and up to date manner. This action is related to the policy of the EC but needs to be developed taking into account the security. Citizen’s awareness is an important issue and is related to the developed open data models by standards organisations in Action 4.

Action 6: Enable the transition to use open source (data exchange) software for water data management. For example, benefits of using open data exchange platforms like FIWARE should be clearly laid out and promoted. In addition, it is important to actively showcase working examples, guarantee stability and security of FIWARE software (DW2020, 2022).

Action 7: Enhance user involvement to increase understanding and acceptance of digital solutions. Digital transformation proceeds at the speed of trust. To get sufficient acceptance and promote the benefits of digital solutions, they must be presented in complete clarity and detail to the user. Specific situations in which digital solutions can foster public involvement and / or environmental education and awareness and support policy goals (short - and long term) need to be further explored. The involvement of potential users in product development is another way forward.

Action 8: Underline the close relationship between technical standards and legislation. Since in recent years many regulatory and legislative reforms have been introduced, some uncertainty about the applicability and the legally binding nature of specific standards mainly due to the revision of obsolete standards and the publication of new sector regulations exist. Against this background, it is important to underline the close relationship between technical standards and legislation and clarify what results from this in practice. (DW2020, 2022).

Action 9: Highlighting social, environmental and ethical aspects in the development of digital solutions in the water sector. Water is still treated mostly as a ‘technical matter’ by most of the actors. Focus should be given to issues such as the inclusion of marginalised groups using new tools and a transparent communication of societal and environmental opportunities and challenges associated with the uptake of a respective digital solution. Water supply operators should be able to reflect on the legal and ethical implications of introducing digital solutions for the service they are providing.

Action 10: Mainstream water security as a universally known and applied term, in all its implication, without ambiguities into its definition. It should be ensured at a normative level that all the actors are aware of the different ramifications of water security, the presence and roles of the other actors involved in this topic as well as the main goals of other water security regulations. This is crucial to ensure that different aspects of water security are not treated as separate parallel matters, or even worse, contradicting each other.

Action 11: Reduce adverse environmental and climate change impacts in the water sector through digital solutions. Digital solutions have a huge potential to mitigate negative effects of digitalisation by improving water efficiency and reducing energy consumption. At EU, national and local levels, research, development, and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be further stimulated to make use of resulting innovations to reduce the carbon footprint of the water sector. However, new challenges associated with switching to computationally expensive - and energy intensive digital solutions must be considered carefully. Solutions should consider the interlinkage between the water domain and associated domains such as energy or food, targeting global optimisation.

(C.) Activities and additional information 

(C.1) Related standardisation activities
CEN-CENELEC-ETSI

 A European Technical Report comprising a software and hardware open architecture for utility meters that supports secure bidirectional communication upstream and downstream through standardised interfaces and data exchange formats and allows advanced information and management and control systems for consumers and service suppliers. The Report identifies a functional reference architecture for communications in smart metering systems. and the standards relevant to meeting the technical / data communications requirements of Mandate M/441, in particular to assist the active participation of consumers. The architecture has been developed drawing on existing and planned implementations, but its generic nature should enable it to support future different implementations.

The Report is available at ftp://ftp.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/List/Measurement/Smartmeters/CENCLCETSI_TR50572.pdf

The latest work programme is available at ftp://ftp.cencenelec.eu/EN/Europeanstandardisation/Fields/EnergySustainability/Management/SmartMeters/Workprogramme2017.pdf

The previous CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Smart Meters Co-ordination Group has been merged into the similar structure dealing with smart energy grids co-ordination (see the relevant section of the Rolling Plan).  Information on the new CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Co-ordination Group on Smart Grids (CG-SG) is available at https://www.cencenelec.eu/areas-of-work/cen-cenelec-topics/smart-grids-and-meters/cen-cenelec-etsi-coordination-group-on-smart-grids-cg-sg/

OGC®

HY_FEATURES: reference model defining real-world water-objects and the way they relate to each other according to hydro-science domain defined by semantics and network topology.

http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/hydrofeatswg

WaterML2.0. Standard information model for the representation of water observations data, with the intent of allowing the exchange of such data sets across information systems, using existing OGC standards.

http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/waterml2.0swg

ETSI

SAREF Investigation for Water (DTR/SmartM2M-103547): determining the requirements for an initial semantic model for the Water domain based on a set of use cases and from available existing data models.

https://goo.gl/324EyW

Industry Specification Group "City Digital Profile" (ISG CDP) was doing work relevant to city standards for water management, but the ISG was closed September 2019.

https://portal.etsi.org/Portals/0/TBpages/CDP/Docs/ISG_CDP_ToR_DG_Approved_20171011.pdf

CEN       

See CEN-CENELEC-ETSI entry above

DW2020

DW2020. 2022 Draft Policy brief; Digitalisation in the water sector Joint policy recommendations from the DW2020 projects; submitted to EC; to be released in Q3 2022

INSPIRE

INSPIRE Directive. reference EU architecture for data sets sharing between EU countries.

http://inspire.ec.europa.eu

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)

The Bureau of Indian Standards has included NGSI-LD in its API specification for unified data exchanges. An on-going work contributed by the EU-India H2020 project LOTUS aims at evolving BIS standards (IS 3025, IS 3025 (Part 32)) to handle measurements from low cost multi-parameters probes.

ISO/IEC

Generic Sensor networks Application Interfaces (ISO/IEC 30128). International Standard that depicts operational requirements for generic sensor network applications, description of sensor network capabilities, and mandatory and optional interfaces between the applications.

https://webstore.iec.ch/preview/info_isoiec30128%7Bed1.0%7Den.pdf

https://www.iso.org/standard/53248.html

ITU-T

The ITU-T Focus Group on Smart Water Management (FG-SWM) issued a series of deliverables including the following:

    • The Role of ICT in Water Resource Management
    • Smart Water Management Stakeholders Map
    • Smart water management project classification
    • Smart water management stakeholder challenges and mitigation report on the KPI to assess the impact of the use of ICT in SWM

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/swm/Pages/default.aspx

The ITU-T Focus Group on Environmental Efficiency for Artificial Intelligence and other Emerging Technologies (FG-AI4EEE) will develop technical reports and technical specifications to address issues related to environmental efficiency, water and energy consumption. More information on ITU FG-AI4EE is available at: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/ai4ee/Pages/default.aspx.

Recommendation ITU-T F.747.6 elaborates on the “Requirements for water quality assessment services using ubiquitous sensor networks (USNs)” https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-F.747.6-201410-I/en

ITU-T SG20 is currently working on draft Recommendations on “Framework of monitoring of water system for smart fire protection” (Y.water-SFP) and “Requirements and capability framework of digital twin for intelligent water conservancy system” (Y.dt-IWCS).

More info: https://itu.int/go/tsg20

ITU-R

ITU-R Working Party (WP) 5B is responsible for studies related to the maritime mobile service, including the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS), the aeronautical mobile service and the radiodetermination service, including both radiolocation and radionavigation services. It studies communication systems for the maritime mobile and aeronautical mobile services and radar and radiolocation systems for the radiodetermination service.

ITU-R WP5B is the group responsible for conducting studies in response to WRC-23 agenda items 1.8 and 1.10:

  • WRC-23 agenda item 1.8 is to consider appropriate regulations with a view to reviewing and if necessary, revising Resolution 155 (Rec. WRC-19) to accommodate the use of fixed-satellite service (FSS) networks by control and non-payload communications of unmanned aircraft systems taking into account the progress obtained by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in the completion of SARPs on the use of FSS for the UAS CNPC links.
  • WRC-23 agenda item 1.10 is to conduct studies on spectrum needs, coexistence with radiocommunication services and regulatory measures for possible new allocations for the aeronautical mobile service for the use of non-safety aeronautical mobile applications, in accordance with Resolution 430 (WRC‑19) on “Studies on frequency-related matters, including possible additional allocations, for the possible introduction of new non-safety aeronautical mobile applications”.

ITU-R WP1C is the in charge of spectrum monitoring, including the development of techniques for observing the use of the spectrum, measurements techniques, inspection of radio stations, identification of emissions and location of interference sources.

ITU-R WP1C completed the work on Report ITU-R SM.2486 on “Use of commercial drones for ITU-R spectrum monitoring tasks” in June 2021. This Report details the common elements, considerations on the uncertainty, possible missions as well as use cases of spectrum monitoring and measurement procedures that are assisted by commercial drones.

ISO

ISO/TC 282: standardisation of water re-use of any kind and for any purpose. It covers both centralised and decentralised or on-site water re-uses, direct and indirect ones as well as intentional and unintentional ones. It includes technical, economic, environmental, and societal aspects of water re-use. Water re-use comprises a sequence of the stages and operations involved in uptaking, conveyance, processing, storage, distribution, consumption, drainage, and other actions related to the handling of wastewater, including the water re-use in repeated, cascaded, and recycled ways.

https://www.iso.org/committee/4856734.html

PSA

WITS Standard Protocol: standard method dedicated to water industry telemetry control and monitoring. This standard protocol makes interoperable equipment from different manufacturers by using features of the DNP3 protocol to satisfy water industry specific functional requirements.

http://www.witsprotocol.org

oneM2M           

oneM2M was launched in 2012 as a global initiative to ensure the most efficient deployment of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) and it includes several SDOs and representatives of different industry sectors.  The latest technical specifications can be found on their website http://www.onem2m.org/technical

The oneM2M standards supports a multi domains/solutions integration that supports Water Management digitalisation requirements, and in particular the integration with the other services and systems that are building the Digital Single Market (e.g. the integration with Smart Cities and with Smart Agriculture solutions). The SAREF ontology makes use of oneM2M as a communication framework (ETSI TS 103 264 (Reference Ontology and oneM2M Mapping) and a specific Smart Watering extension (ETSI TS 103 410-10) is available at  https://www.etsi.org/standards-search

Smart Data Models

The Smart Data Models initiative offer open-licensed data models for several smart domains, including, but not limited to, smart water, smart energy, smart agriculture, and smart environment. The data models are compliant with FIWARE NGSI version 2 and NGSI-LD.

AIOTI

High Level Reference Architecture: reference ICT architecture and semantic data model based on the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 standard for representing IoT entities and services. This reference architecture is transversal to several domains including water. https://aioti.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/AIOTI-HLA-R3-June-2017.pdf

W3C

Web of Things Working Group:  RDF and Linked Data vocabularies to reduce the fragmentation generated in the IoT devices. Moreover, this group is also focused on providing best practices and corresponding APIs to enable semantic interoperability within the Smart City.

Iot-Schema.org. Extension of schema.org data model towards modelling IoT entities with focus on energy, transport, and water infrastructures.

https://www.w3.org/

[34] "EC (2015). The Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Floods Directive (FD): Actions towards the ‘good status’ of EU water and to reduce flood risks"

[35] OECD(2017). Aid for Trade at a Glance 2017

[36] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/water/floods_en

[37] Action Plan for a DSM for Water Services on the discussion platform Futurium: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/content/ict4water-roadmaps-action-plan

[38] Water Europe  - https://watereurope.eu/

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