The use of AI simulation by Wessex Water has reportedly cut weeks from its existing drainage water management plans (DWMPs).
The technology, developed by EnginSoft UK, underwent trials and demonstrated that AI could speed-up the creation of water companies’ strategies for local drainage and water recycling.
According to EnginSoft, its ‘modeFRONTIER’ AI simulation removes the need for the ‘optioneering’, or the trial and error generation of plans, in turn reducing the time taken to assess thousands of solutions. Wessex Water’s trial took four days of an engineer’s time and a central processing unit 12 days to evaluate and produce graphical results comparing cost versus benefits.
Bipin Patel, EnginSoft UK’s managing director, said: “We could see that there were a number of options on the far side of what we call the ‘Pareto Cliff’, where if one or two constraints were tweaked, a significant reduction in cost could be achieved.
“It’s not uncommon for restrictions to exist undetected in complex systems for years, limiting performance, and I’ve seen them highlighted by AI before. The guys at Wessex were fascinated to see the analysis, and I’m sure there’ll be similar instances highlighted as modeFRONTIER usage increases.”
All UK water authorities are required to develop DWMPs for all catchments as part of AMP7, the asset management period running between 2020 and 2025. EnginSoft said using technology such as AI could streamline the process, meet regulatory requirements and ultimately prevent flooding.
Following the trial, Wessex Water decided to purchase a one-year licence to allow it to look at more catchments using the AI-based approach. “The EnginSoft trial for DWMP optioneering delivered positive results,” said David Searby, Wessex Water’s wastewater modelling technical manager.
