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KWR at the CCWI conference

Impressions of the first day

CCWI (Computing and Control in the Water Industry) has always been an important conference for KWR and in particular for its water infrastructure team. Hence, a five-person KWR delegation is participating in this years’ edition, in Exeter UK.

In spite of the conference’s title, there have always been many contributions to this conference series that are more focused on its Water Industry part than on Computing and Control. That balance seems to be shifting more and more. Keywords of the first day of the conference, at least for the sessions that I attended, are Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Digital Twins, and Common Frameworks. Also notable is the significant attention to the requirements for the implementation of these technologies with the utilities, with keywords such as knowledge management, organisations, visualisation and trust. The technology has its challenges, but they have been or can be solved. But to get entire organisations to work with and even embrace the technology, that is the next challenge.

Photo from the presentation of Max Maurer about Data driven water management

Data-driven water management: Is it ready?

That is not to say that there have not been exciting technological developments to share, quite on the contrary. These range from more the fundamental to the practical. From educated intuitions or predictions that the combination of physics-based models with machine learning in hybrid models is going to bring us the best of both worlds and bring us the most accurate predictions, to an operational digital twin of the water supply system of the city of Valencia and a comprehensive serious game to explore the effects of different policies in the food-water-energy nexus (Sim4Nexus). Impressive.

I am looking forward to the second day of this great conference.

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