Digitalization of the water and sanitation sector in the Global South

GWOPA, through Water Operators' Partnerships (WOPs) provides peer-support mechanisms to enhance water utilities' capacity and operational efficiency, contributing significantly to achieving sustainable water and sanitation services. Digital technologies can enhance utilities' capabilities in addressing non-revenue water, leak detection, water quality monitoring, and environmental protection. 

The Business Application Space Solutions (BASS) Program of the European Space Agency (ESA) supports businesses of all sizes and across sectors to develop innovative solutions using space technology. It aims to develop operational services for a wide range of users, supporting the creation and growth of viable companies by integrating different systems. Of importance to the work of GWOPA through the EU-WOPs programme is the work of BASS to promote the emergence of space-based sustainable services addressing societal challenges, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the green transition.  

The adoption of digital tools and services by water utilities worldwide has marked a significant shift towards digitalization, offering improvements in operational efficiency in water supply and distribution and enhancing the resilience of the utilities. GIS mapping and smart meters have been used in asset management to improve water distribution efficiency and transform traditional water management practices by enabling real-time data collection and more informed decision-making processes. Hydraulic modelling tools have enabled optimized water distribution and pressure regulation, reducing leakages and detecting device failures. Integrating these digital tools into the utilities' operational framework represents a progressive step towards sustainable water management and aligns with broader environmental goals by promoting efficiency and reducing wastage. Utilities have also deployed the IoT to enhance resource management, improve predictive maintenance, and boost leak detection. 

BASS has already contributed to deploying services that can address several related water and sanitation-related issues, including water quality monitoring solutions based on remote sensing for freshwater bodies to detect pathogens and suggest prevention/remediation options. Satellite-based information can also be adopted to monitor ground movement, which can impact pipe failure risk, and this data can be included in strategic modelling and operational workflows of water utilities and contractors. SatNav can be used for geo-location, underpinning GIS technologies, feeding into more accurate models of the water catchment areas. IoT and remote sensing can be adopted to manage freshwater resources and improve water basin health through informed decision-making. Space innovations can address non-revenue losses across all stages of prevention, raising awareness, locating losses, and repairing infrastructure. These solutions can help water and sanitation operators enhance resource management, improve predictive maintenance, reduce water losses through leak detection, and optimise overall operational efficiency, leading to cost savings and improved service delivery. 

Despite the benefits of satellite and other terrestrial technologies to improve water and sanitation services, the penetration, especially in the Global South, in utilities, remains low. This is attributed mainly to a lack of adequate capacity and the cost of investing in deploying these technologies. 

GWOPA and BASS will join forces to launch a new initiative called “Digitalization of the water and sanitation sector in the Global South”. The proposed collaboration between GWOPA and BASS is focused on deploying (pre) operational services that exploit space-based and other terrestrial technologies to digitalize the operations carried out by water and sanitation operators residing in the Global South.  The initiative will encompass various use cases, which can be categorised as follows: water sustainability and water resilience.

Water sustainability encompasses services that ensure maintenance and availability of clean water to meet multiple needs, from agriculture to municipal and industrial. Water sustainability promotes water circularity as well as an efficient use of resources. Digital and space technology solutions can be adopted to monitor water pollution, detection of algae blooms, and also river parameters like temperature, chlorophyll and turbidity, etc

Water and wastewater resilience encompasses services that ensure the ability of water and wastewater utilities to withstand and quickly recover from natural and human-made disasters like droughts and floods. Digital and space technology solutions can be adopted to monitor (real-time) the level of water, to risk map assessment for the likelihood of natural disaster, to send a warning alarm, etc

In the context of the digitalization of the water and sanitation sector in the Global South initiative, an awareness-raising and outreach workshop will be organized to engage water and sanitation operators in the Global South. The aim is to elicit interest and share information on potential solutions that BASS has co-developed that could benefit these operators, as well as collect operational use cases from them. During the workshop, BASS will invite European companies that have developed relevant services to showcase. The companies will demonstrate how digitalization can improve water sustainability and resilience while delivering economic benefits to the operators. 

GWOPA will facilitate the definition of use cases by the water and sanitation operators to describe operational and implementation contexts, challenges and expected benefits.

Based on the collected use cases and the interest of the service providers, potential candidates BASS projects will be selected to be adopted and scaled. Ancillary developments to address user needs, customise the service and demonstrate it with the identified customers can be performed in BASS-supported demonstration project which will involve the water operators as pilot users. 

The scope of the demonstration project(s) will be defined by the service provider(s) after having consulted the water operators.

The selected demonstration projects will be co-funded according to the ESA BASS funding rules. An ESA Technical Officer will be assigned to the project and GWOPA will be updated regularly on the progress. 

It is envisaged that the involved water and sanitation operators will contribute to the co-funding of the project through in-kind resources (approximately between 30,000 and 50,000 EUR per project), e.g., manpower to consolidate requirements and participate in the demonstration. The contribution of the operators will be sourced from the budget received in the context of the Water Operators' Partnerships projects, which has been provisionally allocated as the Budget for participating in the GWOPA-ESA initiative Digitalization of the water and sanitation sector in the Global South.

Proposed Activities 

  • GWOPA will facilitate an awareness-raising and outreach workshop to introduce water and sanitation operators to innovative digital solutions from European companies.
  • Identify utility-specific needs through stakeholder consultations, focusing on operational and strategic priorities of utilities, which will be combined in use cases. Select potential demonstration projects leveraging satellite and digital technology, supported by BASS and endorsed by water and sanitation operators selected among WOPs.  
  • Implement the demonstration projects with the endorsement of the water operators.