Standards and standardisation bodies in relation to the exploitation of advances in smart water technologies: current trends and future needs

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Lydia Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia, Roger Moore, Lesley Mansfield, Quillon Harpham, Dragan Savic

Thursday 2 july 2015

15:05 - 15:20h at North America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Special session, (ST) FP7 ICT and water

Parallel session: 12I. Special session: FP7 ICT and water

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There are several projects, funded by the European Commission (EC) and national/regional bodies considering how smart technologies can be exploited for the benefit consumers and industry in the water sector. Inevitably, at the current early stage of development, the various initiatives are uncoordinated and the systems and procedures being produced are not interoperable. Common sense and past experience suggest that were some of them to be interoperable or their outputs made comparable then even greater benefits would accrue. The scope of the paper is to contribute in the understanding of standards and standardisation bodies in relation to the exploitation of advances in monitoring water use and energy consumption and in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), with particular but not exclusive reference to energy saving through increased water efficiency through “smart” technologies. The paper presents the methodology for the classification of these issues, as well as the outcome from a facilitated discussion (October 2014), prompted by the EC (seeking guidance on the subject), among the representatives of ten EC funded projects and other representatives of action groups. A collection of use cases is presented, showing where the introduction of a standard might yield benefits with respect to any or all of: Interoperability/compatibility, comparability and reliability of systems, data and procedures, security of information, effective operations, and communication with the public and ease of use. For each use case pending issues are presented, such as what should be standardised, advantages and disadvantages of standardisation, compliance with other existing standards and the need for new ones, the work required to prepare and the organisations to publish and maintain them. A report on the findings and future steps of this ongoing procedure will be included in the paper.