IFAT 2018 under the digitalization trend Water 4.0

What does Water 4.0 look like? Providing affordable, top-quality drinking water is certainly one of the most important tasks of the water industry. One prerequisite for this is continuous innovations that safeguard the industry's high standards in the long term. The latest developments from the field of drinking water production and distribution will be on display at the upcoming IFAT.

Water 4.0 will be the leading theme of IFAT 2018, the world's leading trade fair for water, sewage, waste and raw materials management. It will take place from May 14 to 18, 2018, at the trade fair center in Munich. According to the observations of Silvia Fritscher, IFAT project manager at Messe München, for several years now more and more of the innovations presented at IFAT can be associated with the buzzwords digitalization, automation and Water 4.0. A trend that will intensify in 2018.

Analytics sensors as parts of the network

"We are currently seeing the greatest progress in the digitization of the drinking water industry in the areas of pump control, measurement technology and drinking water analytics," says Julia Braune. The managing director of the German Water Partnership (GWP) business and research network continues: "While networking to control pumps is already well advanced, the extensive networking of plant components by means of sensors, for example for analytics, continues to offer great potential. Ever-improving communication between water management systems, such as wells, waterworks and drinking water networks, can optimize both security of supply and energy and resource efficiency."

Opportunities through the "digital twin

An even more extensive playing field for digitization is the creation of a "digital twin". This refers to a data model that depicts a machine, a plant or even a complex infrastructure with all its information and dependencies. "With a digital twin, various operating modes can be tested and optimized in realistic simulations without any risk whatsoever," says Christian Ziemer, Siemens AG and head of the GWP Water 4.0 working group, describing a possible field of application in the drinking water and wastewater sector.

Identifying customer needs even better

The importance of digital change has arrived in the municipal water industry - this is the result of a survey of its members by the Association of Municipal Companies (VKU): more than two-thirds of the companies attach a high to very high relevance to digitization. One in two companies is already planning or implementing a digitization strategy. "Digitization underscores customer and citizen benefits as the central motivation for change," emphasizes Michael Beckereit.

The VKU vice president continues: "Evaluations of large volumes of data make it possible to identify customer needs even better and to understand processes better. This in turn forms a good basis for developing new, even more precisely tailored products and strategies in the drinking water industry."

Maturity model Water Supply 4.0 in progress

In order to be able to provide water utilities with assistance in the broad field of digitization in the future, the German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water (DVGW) commissioned the IWW Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wasserforschung to develop a "Water Supply 4.0 Maturity Model" this fall. "We hope to use the model to obtain a valid overview of the current practices of digitization in the water industry. Ideally, it will be possible to derive improvement measures from it and put them in a meaningful order," explains Dr. Dirk Waider, Vice President Water at DVGW.

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