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Yorkshire Water commissioned a project with the AMRC to investigate the use of Virtual Reality (VR) during the design phase of their new ‘standard product’ catalogue. The project highlighted a number of design considerations which could be validated more easily, and rapidly through the exploitation of immersive VR, rather than the traditional approach of evaluating physical fluid handling prototypes which were very often scrapped. The use of VR not only produced significant cost savings for the company and consumers, it also enabled Yorkshire Water to reduce its carbon footprint as part of its mission to become a more sustainable utility through its Climate Change Strategy. The final phase of the project involved the successful implementation of a VR system which Yorkshire Water has incorporated into their product design lifecycle.

The work described in this article results from a problem proposed by a water utility company in the framework of ESGI 140th, during June 2018. The objective is to evaluate water meters performance using historical data, knowing that, being a mechanical device, the water meters suffer a deterioration with time and use, losing accuracy throughout its cycle of use. We intend to approach a problem capable of identifying anomalies on water consumption pattern. In present work, ARIMA modeling was considered to obtain a predictive model. The results show that in the time series traditional framework revealed significant and adequate in the different estimated models. The in-sample forecast is promising, conducting to adequate measures of performance.

Urban water demand forecasting is a powerful supporting tool for specific water utility decision making problems. Among the others, ARIMA is one of the possible approaches to achieve an efficient short-term forecasting.

The aim of this essay is to explore theoretically the possibility of using the value-oriented and rental approach in estimating the performance of water utility companies (WUC) in their integrated reporting ( ).

The sovereignty and well-being of nations are highly dependent on the continuous and uninterrupted operation of critical infrastructures. Thus, the protection of utilities that provision critical services (e.g., water, electricity, telecommunications) is of vital importance given the severity imposed by any failure of these services. Recent security incidents in the context of critical infrastructures indicate that threats in such environments appear to be increasing both in frequency and intensity. The complexity of typical critical infrastructures is among the factors that make these environments vulnerable to threats. One of the most problematic types of threat is an advanced persistent threat (APT). This usually refers to a sophisticated, targeted, and costly attack that employs multiple attack vectors to gain access to the target system, then to operate in stealth mode when penetration is achieved, and to exfiltrate data or cause failures inside the system. In this chapter, we demonstrate how a set of processes developed in the context of HyRiM’s framework can assist in minimizing the damage caused to a utility organization that is subjected to an APT style of attack. Specifically, the framework is demonstrated using data from a real-world water utility network and an industrial control system (ICS) test-bed, and in which optimal defensive strategies are investigated.

In the United States, water supply and sanitation are a responsibility of local governments. As a consequence, the water sector is highly fragmented: There are 54,000 public water systems nationwide, of which more than 90 % serve localities with less than 10,000 inhabitants. Altogether, public water systems serve 242 million Americans, with the remainder of the population having their own water supply. Most public water systems in the United States are owned by local governments, and all water utilities in large U.S. cities are publicly owned. But in the U.S., a public water system can also be owned by a cooperative or a private company. 35 million Americans, almost 15 % of those served by public water systems, receive their water from privately owned utilities, known in the U.S. as investor-owned utilities. These utilities operate almost half of all public water systems in the country, predominantly in towns.

Ek Sonn Chan had a gun pointed to his head. As manager of the water utility, he had dared to ask an army officer to pay the water bill for the army barracks, or else the supply would be cut off. In the face of the less than optimal response, Chan retreated. But the next day he came back with a handful of journalists and cut off the water. The Army, under pressure from the public, gave in and paid its water bill.

The turnaround of NWSC, the National Water and Sewerage Corporation of Uganda, is a textbook case of how a failing water utility was transformed into a performing company. Over a period of 5 years, from 1998 to 2003, costs were slashed, efficiency was increased, hierarchies were made flatter, service quality improved, and a loss-making company in one of the poorest countries in the world moved into the profit zone without even increasing its tariffs. This was achieved to a large extent through the efforts of a visionary leader, William Muhairwe, who applied modern business management techniques to shake up a sclerotic government agency.

How do the three successful turnarounds of water utilities in developing and emerging countries compared in the preceding chapters – PPWSA in Cambodia, NWSC in Uganda and Manila Water in the Philippines – compare with each other? What are some common traits and what are important differences in the circumstances the utilities faced, and in how the turnarounds were achieved?

The French water sector is organized in a way that is quite distinct from the organization of the sector in most other European countries. Unlike in England, there is no full privatization of utilities through the sale of assets. However, in contrast with other European countries, with the exception of Spain, most municipalities delegate the provision of water and sanitation services to private companies. Two thirds of French citizens receive their water from just three private companies – Veolia, Suez and the much smaller SAUR. They have signed a total of 4,700 contracts with municipalities for drinking water alone. These companies are also the most active players on the international water market, serving, directly or indirectly, 163 million people in about 40 countries in 2010, with Veolia and Suez being by far the largest players. In France, where the state dominates the economy, the strong presence of private companies in the water sector may seem counter-intuitive. It is explained largely by history, as will be shown below.

Being a semi-arid state, California faces frequent and prolonged droughts. In a typical policy intervention to deal with less water, state agencies and water utilities responded (in the urban sector) by either cutting water allocations to users or by dramatically increasing water tariffs, or both. Drought returned to California in 2007, and lasted, with various levels of severity until 2014. Starting 2008, with the slowdown in economic activity in the state, water rates that were adjusted, led to reduction in water consumption and decline in revenues of water utilities; customers that saved water have faced increased rates again and again, much to their dissatisfaction. The Water Budget Rate Structure (WBRS) (called also by some analysts sustainable rate design, since it seeks to stabilize revenues and drive conservation at the same time) has emerged as a practice that allows water utilities obtain a high level of conservation without jeopardizing the financial and political stability of the water utility. This chapter reviews the legal, economic and political aspects of the design and implementation of the WBRS in southern California in three water utilities, starting in 1990 until a recent implementation by the Western Municipal Water District. The chapter draws lessons and suggestions regarding the possible implementation of the WBRS by other utilities.

In Germany, more than 6,000 municipally-owned water utilities produce high-quality water that can be drunk from the tap. Leakage accounts for, on average, only 6 % of water production, among the lowest in the world, in large part because the network is regularly renewed. The pipe network is in such good shape that, unlike in countries with a hotter climate and worse infrastructure, there is no risk of recontamination between the treatment plant and the tap. Utilities in many other countries chlorinate drinking water to prevent such recontamination in the distribution network. Germany is one of a few countries in the world that provides safe drinking water without the need for chlorination, and customers appreciate the better taste of the water. According to a survey, 91 % of water customers are satisfied or very satisfied with the service they receive from their local water utility. A high level of service quality and technical excellence are hallmarks of the German water sector, which is well regulated in terms of drinking water quality and pollution.

This chapter reviews principles of source water protection, for both point and nonpoint sources of pollution as well as the main approaches to risk assessment for potable water supplies. It includes an overview of some risk assessment case studies.

Decrying inadequate sewage treatment, high water losses, service interruptions, and nonpotable water, Istat (2012), FederUtility (2013), and AEEG (2013) have denounced the water service infrastructures state of emergency that has a single cause and a common solution: investments.

Over the last 25 years, the governance of public services has undergone important reforms in many countries. During the 1990s, efforts to reform the corporate entities established to pursue public policy and commercial objectives wholly owned either by the state or local governments (state-owned enterprises, or SOEs) were aimed at promoting privatization even if, for both political and economic reasons, the state remained a major owner of productive assets in many economies (Menozzi et al. 2011).

The Republic of Latvia has promulgated a number of laws that govern the national response to emergencies in water and wastewater.