Southern Water’s work to innovate as part of its wider goal of driving down the use of storm overflows has been recognised with 2 projects being awarded a share of Ofwat’s Innovation Fund. The schemes were awarded funding from Ofwat in its 4th Water Breakthrough Challenge, which looks for solutions with the potential to deliver wide-scale transformational change benefiting customers, society, and the environment. The first project to benefit will receive £1.58million and will help Southern Water develop a platform for water quality monitoring that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse and calibrate data from monitors. If proven, the platform will support efforts in expanding water quality monitoring of water bodies across the region. These will help the utility company to improve itsability to learn more about water quality, to help in creating healthier rivers and seas. The project will address the challenges that water quality monitors have, as due to the environment they are in, maintenance and calibration is challenging and expensive. Using AI and machine-learning could be a gamechanger, that if successful, will make it much easier to deploy more monitors, whilst improving the accuracy of information that they provide. The 2nd project will benefit from £1million and will help to develop a unique platform to help Southern Water make informed decisions about where to put sustainable urban drainage solutions (SuDs). SuDS are a holistic approach to managing rainfall that mimic natural drainage processes – helping to reduce flooding, watercourse erosion and pollution risks caused by development. They can also make our urban areas more climate resilient Rory Miles, Southern Water Innovation Programme Manager, says:
“Innovation is key for activities across Southern Water, from developing new solutions to help us tackle big challenges: from water efficiency to protecting our environment. We need to think creatively and collaborate in and out of the water sector to address these very complex challenges. “Both of these projects will help us in our work creating healthier rivers and seas, and will enable us to implement more solutions across our region – through finding the best places to place SUDS, and to support an expansion of our water quality monitoring.”
Helen Campbell, Senior Director at Ofwat, adds:
“There are big challenges in the water industry that must be solved, some are well known and others are less so. In our fourth Water Breakthrough Challenge we called for solutions with potential to deliver wide-scale, transformational change for customers, society and the environment – and that’s exactly what today’s winners have done. “From raingardens to prevent flooding to green energy from treated sewage, innovations to cut the water sector’s carbon footprint to robots that patrol the pipe network, the winners are all helping shape a more sustainable and efficient water sector.”
Whenever someone says “we need to think creatively” you know what’s coming will be a pile of poo, most apt considering it is Southern Water, The answer is still the same as it has been for years, stop taking money out of the system as has been done for years and start spending it on increasing capacity to meet the current needs, let alone the future needs of an increasing population.
Abolsutely
Sothern Water love looking for ‘innovative’ and ‘creative’ ways of spending other peoples money on solutions to improve their public reputation, whislt still increasing charges to us, so they can pass more of it on to their shareholders… (they’re the sort of privitised utility, the CONservatives have wet dreams about)
The answer is indeed, always the same. You can have a nationalised water company in which case the money for investment comes from you the tax payer. Which means it will be in competition with every other public body like the NHS. Or its a private entity where the money for investment comes from private investors who will want a return on their money. That means taking money out of the system. Neither system allows you something for nothing.
Not Quite…
Simply:
Regardless of model, the ‘utility company’ charges it’s customers for the product.
That money is used to pay the on-going costs of running the business (e.g. wages, etc). anything left is profit.
In a public utility, any profit goes back to the government , and can all be used, directly or indirectly, to invest in infrastructure.
In privatised utility (like SW), most of that profit goes in paying dividends to the shareholders and little, if any, is reinvested in infrastructure.
There is a massive amount of money paid to shareholders, which would otherwise be available, either to invest in the business (infrastructure) or to reduce the cost of the product.
The only advantage to the public of a utility, like SW, being privatised, was that the money raised when the company was sold to private investors could be (and was) used, by the CONservatives, for short-term tax cuts to bolster their public image.
In the long term, all the hundreds of millions of pounds paid to shareholders, can only come from the customers!
or the taxpayer…
Did you read the article at all, southern water is being given money by ofwat a government department. So whilst they make profits which would be invested back into infrastructure as a public company, they instead pay that money to shareholders and then take taxpayers money on top for investment. You don’t pay a bill for NHS, you would do for a public water company as you use to, only difference being profit would be invested or returned to taxpayers instead of shareholders.
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence.
not really true,..
AI is possibly an extension of Machine Learning, but ‘Artificial Intelegence’ is a buzz-word in todays culture.
99.9% of what is claimed to be to be AI, (like circling an image on your phone & getting Google to search for it) is nothing of the sort & either a simplebit of ‘technology’ or basic Machine Learning.
Even the likes of ChatGPT aren’t really ‘AI’, just a fast machine learning driven averaging of a massive dataset
Artificailal, yes, but there’s nothing really ‘intelegent’ about it.
What nonsense you write Wightlink!
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence simply refers to computer systems that exhibit intelligence (which is a broad term). Machine learning refers to programs that can improve their performance on a given task automatically by extracting knowledge from data and learning from it using various techniques. Not all artificial intelligence techniques use machine learning.
Peter Purve:”Not all artificial intelligence techniques use machine learning.”
and ‘Machine Learning’ is not (necessarily) Artificial Intelegence!
Therefore the two (machine learning and Artificial Intelegence) can exist seperately and uniquely,
Therefore (in part, by your own arguments) Machine learning is NOT a subset of artificial intelligence.
Like banging my head against a brick wall.
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence.
Machine learning refers to a range of artificial intelligence techniques based on automatic/autonomous learning.
I think I could create a platform for water quality monitoring. Half a dozen pallets and some polarized glasses. If the water’s clear, it’s clean, if not…… 20 quid!
It would be interesting to see how much of this taxpayers money disappears like magic into shareholders pockets and over paid management
So Southern Water pays massive dividends while dumping shedloads of effluent into the waters around the island then gets awarded ove £1.5million of taxpayers money. You really couldn’t make it up!