We are delighted to share our success as this year's Institute of Water South West Area Innovation Award winner.
Our innovation - titled Understanding discoloured water using data-driven analytics - has transformed the way clients understand the reasons for persistent discolouration contact rates so intervention strategies can be modified to improve aesthetic water quality, thereby reducing the number of customer contacts. New thinking and new techniques for data analytics combined with our understanding of aesthetic water quality in distribution networks has enabled us to take a data-driven engineering approach to identify certain features which are more strongly associated with discolouration contacts. The project team from WRc included Jo Hulance, Mark Kowalski, Fiona Thomson and Gabriela Manzella.
The independent judging panel comprised of Academic, Water Company and Supply Chain professionals, who gave their thoughts on our winning entry:
This entry showed how existing data can be used innovatively to model issues around potable water discolouration. Some original thoughts turned into a practical application allowing the resolution of DWI Reg 28 issues. A worthy winner of this year’s submissions.
A representative from the WRc project team will attend the Institute of Water National President’s Dinner and Awards Evening in Cardiff on September 13th 2023 where the award will be presented. We have also been invited to speak about our winning innovation at an ‘innovation celebration’ event being hosted by Institute of Water later this year alongside the other entrants of the Innovation Awards.