The credit rating agency Moody's has warned that water companies face an "elevated" risk from cyber attackers targeting drinking water, as suppliers wait on permission from the industry regulator to ramp up spending on digital security. Moody's said, in a report to investors, that hackers are increasingly zeroing in on infrastructure companies, including water and wastewater treatment companies, and the use of AI (artificial intelligence) could accelerate this trend. Last month, Southern Water, which supplies 4.6 million customers in the south of England, said the Black Basta ransomware group had claimed to have accessed its systems, posting a "limited amount" of data on the dark web. Separately, South Staffordshire Water apologised in 2022 after hackers stole customers' personal data. Moody's warned that the growing use of data-logging equipment to monitor water consumption, and the use of digital smart meters, made companies more vulnerable to attacks.

The Living Planet Index produced by WWF estimates that wildlife population sizes have dropped by 68 per cent since 1970. The charity advocates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool of conservation technology to monitor and curb this alarming rate of decline. One of the most useful applications is in acoustic monitoring, recording the sounds of wildlife ecosystems on weatherproof sensors. Many animals, from birds and bats to mammals and even invertebrates, use sound for communication, navigation and territorial defence, providing reams of rich data on how a species population is doing. AI provides a fast and cost-effective way to analyse hours of recordings for patterns of behaviour.

You'd think that of all the leaks in the country, the one that pops up on the street where a professor of water systems lives would get fixed pretty quickly. But as Vanessa Speight will tell you, that's sadly not the case. "It just comes out of the pavement and runs down the road," says Prof Speight, an expert in drinking water quality at the University of Sheffield. It was roughly a year ago that she first reported the problem to her local water firm. Despite efforts to locate the source of the leak, the company has come up dry. "It's probably been six different times they've dug up the road," Prof Speight adds.