Smart management of resources: effective infrastructure and asset monitoring

Water infrastructure relies on numerous assets that require monitoring and maintenance, from pipes and pumps to valves and treatment plants. Monitoring each of these assets presents its own challenges, but smart technologies are helping to create a better understanding of infrastructure health. 

Aquatech Online talked to Swan members, Mattias Nahlin, chief strategy officer at Waltero, and Tom Bennett, commercial director at UDlive, to find how their companies are using technology to monitor and manage resources.

  

Mattias Nahlin – Waltero

Waltero uses computer vision and edge AI to solve a wide range of monitoring challenges in the water sector. Its W-Sensors capture and interpret images from wells, meters, pipes, pumps, and other infrastructure, making it possible to digitise many different assets with a single technology.

By processing data at the edge ─ directly on the device ─ Waltero’s solution eliminates the need for constant cloud connectivity, which helps to reduce costs and improve efficiency. This means utilities can deploy a single, adaptable sensor across their network to track water usage, detect leaks, monitor equipment health, and even assess environmental conditions in real-time.

 

Why do companies in the water sector need to monitor assets and infrastructure?

The infrastructure for delivering clean water and safely removing wastewater relies on a massive network of pipes, pumps, valves, and treatment plants. However, the quality and age of these assets varies both across and within countries. 

In Europe, for example, some pipes have been in use for more than a century. If something breaks unexpectedly – a burst pipe, a failing pump – it can cause serious service disruptions, environmental damage, and expensive emergency repairs.

“By monitoring their assets, companies can stay ahead of problems”

 

“By monitoring their assets, companies can stay ahead of problems, catching leaks, pressure drops, or contamination risks before they turn into major issues,” explains Nahlin. “But it’s also about efficiency – knowing exactly when to maintain or replace equipment instead of running on guesswork saves money and extends the life of infrastructure.”

Ultimately, monitoring is about keeping water systems reliable, safe, and cost-effective while meeting strict regulations.

 

What challenges are associated with the traditional approach to monitoring?

Manual inspections are both expensive and inefficient. Nahlin added: “Not being able to keep track of operational visibility means problems go undetected until they get serious, and expensive to fix. With some utilities losing more than 20-30 per cent of the clean water as non-revenue-water to leaks and a growing water shortage in many parts of the world, this is obviously not sustainable.”

With aging infrastructure, worsening water scarcity, and more unpredictability driven by climate change, monitoring needs are increasing, and will only increase further.

Nahlin added: “Therefore, there is a great push world-wide to fix the problem, the EU has set up large funds for digitisation and asset management, in particular, in the south of Europe. These efforts will be an important part of the solution to both save on operational costs and to fix the most critical problems.”

 

How is smart technology helping to overcome those challenges?

One of the major advantages of using smart technology in asset monitoring and management is the ability to do so remotely, which cuts down on unnecessary, expensive site visits.

“Smart tech means you can go from firefighting mode to predictive maintenance, with near-real-time sensors, AI-powered analytics, and remote monitoring to catch issues early and optimize operations,” Nahlin explained.

“For example, IoT sensors can track pressure, flow, and water quality 24/7, flagging anything unusual immediately. AI can analyse patterns and predict when a pump or pipe is likely to fail so maintenance teams can fix it before it breaks.”

“Smart tech means you can go from firefighting mode to predictive maintenance”

 

Waltero’s solutions focus on versatility, and ease of deployment. “Instead of expensive infrastructure overhauls, we provide a plug-and-play AI sensor system that can read existing meters and infrastructure with minimal setup.”

“Our Edge AI processing reduces the need for constant cloud connectivity, cutting down on power consumption and data costs.” Nahlin explained. “This means the devices can run for up to a decade on the internal battery, and that implementation can be done quickly and without the complexity of traditional IoT deployments.”

 

What different technologies can be used, and how can water companies benefit from them?

Smart technology is improving all the time. The market is full of different technologies and sensors - some of these are designed for very specific tasks and some solve multiple tasks. Often, different technologies will be combined to provide the required data sets, these include: IoT sensors, smart meters, advanced SCADA and cloud platforms, AI and machine learning and digital twins.

Nahlin added: “By combining these technologies, you can reduce water loss, cut costs, improve regulatory compliance, and extend the life of your assets.”

Waltero uses a variety of smart technologies to monitor assets and infrastructure:

• Edge AI and computer vision: Sensors use on-device intelligence to read water meters, detect anomalies, and process data locally. This reduces power consumption and enables faster, real-time insights.
• IoT and wireless connectivity: Solutions use LTE-M, NB-IoT, and WiFi to transmit data reliably, even in areas with connectivity challenges.
• Ultra-low power, battery-powered, low-maintenance sensors: Designed for long-term use, sensors operate efficiently without frequent battery replacements.
• Cloud AI: For alarms, anomaly detection, data refinement, system-wide insights and prioritisation.
• Cloud and API integration: Data is easily accessible through the Waltero platform or via APIs, making it seamless for utilities to integrate into existing systems.

Nahlin told Aquatech Online: “This combination allows Waltero to digitise water networks faster, more efficiently, and with lower deployment costs than traditional smart metering solutions.”

“Those who embrace smart, adaptable solutions play a key role in ensuring sustainable water management for generations to come”

 

VA Syd, the biggest water utility in the south of Sweden, is using Waltero W-Sensors to monitor the inlets to their water production, to perform predictive maintenance and avoid blockages. Using Waltero’s camera sensors, the utility has already been able to cut operational costs by almost 70 per cent, while simultaneously improving the quality of its work.

 

What is the future of smart monitoring?

The water sector is set on a path towards fully digital, AI-powered networks, where every asset is continuously monitored and optimised. However, some countries are further advanced than others. With water supplies diminishing and infrastructure ageing, the future of water supply will rely on: 

• AI-driven predictive maintenance, where utilities fix issues before they become major failures.
• Seamless connectivity, with IoT and satellite solutions making real-time monitoring possible everywhere.
• More autonomy, as AI-powered devices make decisions at the edge, reducing the need for human intervention.
• Integrated digital twins, where entire water networks are mapped digitally to simulate and optimize performance.

Nahlin concluded: “As the industry moves forward, those who embrace smart, adaptable solutions will not only save money and resources ─ they’ll also play a key role in ensuring sustainable water management for generations to come.”

 

TOM BENNET, UDLive

UDlive provides end to end analysis solutions, both hardware and software for the water sector, including utilities, insure-tech, facilities management, and flood preparedness. The hardware features sensors that takes measurements remotely with sub-millimetre accuracy and uploads these onto the cloud, while the software features data presentation and analytic tools that drive insights from the data. 

The company was founded in 2018 and has since grown to work with the majority of UK water companies, a number of local authorities, and critical infrastructure organisations such as energy or transport companies. It is has now expanded to Europe and North America.

 

Why do companies need to monitor assets and infrastructure?

Our relationship with water is one of having too little or too much. Water is a precious resource and scarcity is a real issue around the world. On the other hand, too much water, and the wrong type of water, can cause enormous problems, whether that’s flooding, sewage spills, overflows and backups.

“You've got to have a strong understanding of your assets, how they’re operating, what the problems are, what the capacity is, where the lack of capacity is”

 

“Too much water can cause enormous amounts of distress and can be incredibly costly,” Tom Bennett, UDlive’s commercial director, told Aquatech Online.

“Having the right amount of water in the right place at the right time is one of the fundamentals of life for everyone. And in order to achieve that you've got to have a strong understanding of your assets, how they’re operating, what the problems are, what the capacity is, where the lack of capacity is, etc.”

 

What challenges are associated with the traditional approach to monitoring?

The challenge with the traditional approach is that pump stations and treatment centres are only a small part of the overall water infrastructure. There is no doubt that these are the easiest places to monitor but identify issues at these sites could well mean problems in other parts of the network that are traditionally harder to monitor and to locate.

“There’s often an incomplete understanding of what the networks are, what they look like, or even where you have sewage overflow sites. So, you wouldn't necessarily know when you've got sewage going into a river, or river feeding into a combined sewer which is putting a huge amount of excess water into the system.”

And the problem with this lack of monitoring and oversight is that “you might look at water data coming into a treatment centre and look at the population for that catchment area and say that looks a little bit high, but where do you go from there?”

"You need to scale the monitoring to cover the network, but that mustn’t be at the expense of data quality"

 

The other danger is that can then lead you to inefficient and overly expensive solutions, building unnecessary ‘grey infrastructure’, because you don’t know the real root cause. The move to a more connected digital world has also presented challenges, however, especially in terms of data. 

“Ten years ago, the problem was there was no remote data collection,” Bennett began. “Then there was a move for broader monitoring of networks, but with inconsistent quality of data. In a treatment centre, running a SCADA system, you have constant data, because there is power and there are people and so there is reliability. But remote monitoring, often using float switches or ultrasound, faced communication challenges, quality issues which meant there was not a lot of trust in the data being recorded.”

 

How is smart technology helping to overcome those challenges?

To understand your network, its assets and infrastructure, it is not enough to simply have smart technology. You need to know where to monitor, how your monitoring technology works together, you need quality components and you need to be able to communicate reliable data consistently, in order to be able to drive usable insights.

“You need to scale the monitoring to cover the network, but that mustn’t be at the expense of data quality.” Bennett explained. “If you don’t have quality data being recorded, then the whole thing is going to fall down. Rubbish in, rubbish out, as they say.”

 

What different technologies can be used, and how can water companies benefit from them?

UDLive uses radar technology for level and flow measurement in sewer systems, which provide much greater accuracy and reliability than ultrasound and float switches.

“Float switches don’t provide you with very granular detail and they also get snagged the whole time, ultrasound often doesn’t cope well with humid conditions and isn’t able to provide you with constant level data,” Bennett told Aquatech Online.

Ultrasound also struggles with ‘benching’, i.e. where measurements of the height of water in the sewer is affected by obstacles such as steps and other structures, even cobwebs. “This is why we have transitioned away from constant level monitoring to using radar, as they provide more accurate data.”

Reliable communications are key to remote smart monitoring, otherwise the devices will need site visits, which becomes expensive.

"We have transitioned away from constant level monitoring to using radar, as they provide more accurate data"

 

“We've achieved this using new cellular technologies that provide greater availability and help reduce power consumption, such as CAT-1(bis), which is part of the 4G band this has helped bring down power consumption. But it also means you can deploy a device for five to seven years before returning to it, which helps the business case, as you don’t need to close roads and deploy teams of workers, and the cost of all that, especially when you have tens of thousands of remote monitoring sensors on your network.”

When working with sewers, it is also important to use sensors that are built for the harsh environment. They need to be able to withstand corrosion, the right type of antennas that ensure reliable communication, and also the right type of radar technology.

 

What different technologies can be used, and how can water companies benefit from them?

UDLive’s most popular product is the Pixel2, which is an integrated radar sensor with a data logger remote telemetry unit (RTU). The all-in-one compact device has been designed to be easy to deploy in a wide range of settings such as in manhole covers and above water courses. 

“We’ve tried to be flexible with needs, so the telemetry unit can plug into a wide variety of different sensors and instrumentation, and can work with different protocols to transmit data, depending on what you want to measure. You can also deploy the sensor remotely from the telemetry unit, e.g. in deep sewers where the RTU needs to be closer to the surface. Other sensors can be deployed in rivers to measure water levels more accurately than pressure-based sensors.”

The data can be pulled together and analysed in UDLive’s own portal or can be used by customers in their own systems. 

In total, UDLive has over 30,000 devices deployed across sewer networks, rivers, other water courses and reservoirs. One such deployment was with Northern Ireland Water which was experiencing high levels of water entering a treatment centre. The utility had plans to build new infrastructure with the cost entering millions of pounds. UDlive used flood modelling software to identify the best places to deploy a sensor network. In one example, the sensors then identified that there was a large amount of water infiltrating the sewer network from an adjacent water course.

"We've achieved this using new cellular technologies that provide greater availability and help reduce power consumption"

 

“So, we could say to the utility, by all means investigate but basically if you were to reline this section of the network you would significantly reduce the amount of water entering the treatment centre. Then there would be no need to for additional expensive infrastructure.”

Smart technology, deployed correctly, to provide quality, reliable, consistent data meant an outlay of tens of thousands, rather than millions. A huge cost saving.

Another project with the Milan water company in Italy also identified infiltration that was leading to high volumes of water entering a treatment plant, however, in this instance, the sensors also identified blockages in the sewer system that would need expensive remediation and so the insights gained from the sensor data was that, in this case, the excess water was best left in the network to help flush out those blockages.

This ability to predict blockages has also been used in a project with Anglian Water in the UK. UDLive is helping the utility predict blockages so that they can be cleaned before they lead to sewer overflow. 

 

What is the future of smart monitoring?

The future of smart monitoring goes beyond water sector assets and infrastructure, according to Bennett. 

“We've got to join different stakeholders together to get a broader picture because it's great that as sector we’ve gone from treatment works and pump stations to broader network monitoring, but actually the full network is broader still. You need to be looking at the hills, the fields, the roads, the impact of paving over gardens, these sort of things, because water is not spread evenly throughout the year, and with changing climactic patterns. You’ve got to look at sustainable urban drainage suds and ways of holding that water up so it doesn't all enter the network in 20 minutes, but is spread out at least over 12, 24, 48 hours.”

"An all-encompassing vision of a catchment area. I think that’s going to be crucial"

 

Bennett believes the solution is to view the broader network ─ rivers, fields, roads, sewers, pump stations, treatment plants ─ in terms of catchment areas, which would involve greater information and data sharing. Understanding when to monitor, or how frequently, will also be important, with intelligent solutions gaining an almost ‘live’ picture of the catchment but only providing insights and data in response to changing weather patterns and water levels.

“Weather forecasts and geological data feeding into the live sensor readings that will drive a much greater accuracy of model, an all-encompassing vision of a catchment area. I think that’s going to be crucial. This will lead to better flood preparedness, wastewater and storm management and ultimately how to use water more effectively.”

If you are visiting Aquatech Amsterdam, stop by the Digital Water Pavilion; SWAN-led content sessions will be held on the Digital Stage on March 12 and 13.