The IWA Digital Water Programme has initiated a series of White Papers to help utilities, water professionals and all those interested in water management and stewardship issues to better understand the opportunities of digital technologies. This white paper focuses on presenting Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions for the water sector. The aim is to introduce readers to tangible solutions (rather than technologies) that were developed to address specific challenges in real-life water systems. We hope that by using applied examples, the topic of AI and its applications in the water industry will be made clearer to a wider group of interested readers. The examples shown here were selected to demonstrate that AI-based solutions can address real challenges and provide tangible benefits to the water sector.

It's easy to take water for granted. Turn on the tap, and you'll receive clean, life-giving water (with some very notable exceptions). But for a myriad of reasons, ranging from our changing climate to aging infrastructure to growing demands for water, all aspects of the water cycle -- how it is collected, cleaned, distributed (and repeat) -- are overdue for a technological makeover. For one thing, the workforce behind our waterworks is aging, at least within the public water utility sector, which is composed of an astounding 50,000 individual systems. "Lots of senior engineers are 30 years into their job and are reaching retirement," says Will Maize, a water industry analyst with market research firm Bluefield Research.