South West Water Competition Hackathon Day

The Centre for Water Systems (CWS) at the University of Exeter and the South West Water (SWW) are working closely in the EU H2020 Fiware4Water project to explore opportunities for future digital water solutions. 

In November 2019, SWW and CWS have collaborated with GW4 Water Security Alliance (WSA) to host a competition to challenge GW4 universities (Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter) researchers for developing ideas using data analytics to improve the understanding in water consumption demands and anomaly detections in the water network.

Using real time data sets provided by SWW, 15 participants including SWW experts, researchers from GW4 universities, WISECDT and Stream IDC students had two weeks to work up their ideas and develop tools to analyse water use, working alongside experts from SWW and the GW4 Water Security Alliance.

The winner was announced at a Hackathon event at Exeter Science Park, on 27^th November. Dr Nans Addor, a computational hydrologist who has recently joined the department of Geography at the University of Exeter, came out with his machine-learning algorithms.

Excited by his win Dr Addor said: “This experience was useful – I was able to process and make sense of the high quantity of data produced by SWW water meters every day. To identify patterns of water consumption, I used machine-learning algorithms, which have the potential to help SWW localise leakages and forecast water demand at high temporal and spatial resolution.”

Joshua Pocock, Data Strategy Lead at South West Water said: “For us, the competition evidenced the value of engaging with Universities, sharing our data and sourcing solutions from expectant, fresh thinkers. All the participants tackled our challenge statement in their own way and although there could only be one winner, all the entries have great potential. I also hope the competition demonstrated that the Water Industry has big challenges like reaching zero leakage and halving water abstractions so there’s lots of opportunities to make an impact. A big congratulations to our winning entry; Nans Addor and thanks to everyone who made the event a success.”

Author: University of Exeter