Water is expected to become a major strategic resource in the future, according to the World Bank, and many cities are already experiencing water stress. It is estimated the investment required to continue providing safe drinking water in the United States alone through 2030 is $384.2 billion. Yet cities still take a reactive approach for fixing visible water leaks and there is almost no plan for identifying background leaks with no visible presence. This problem presents a major market opportunity for those who can improve the way cities detect infrastructure issues and optimize replacement of faulty pipelines.
This is exactly what Mehrdad Varedi, founder of Waterlix, set out to do. After working for several years on municipal technology solutions, he knew cities needed better options for managing assets and operations. However, in order to get to business, he needed actual data with open licenses on which to build his models. He aimed to examine and assess variables that would predict the probability of leakage on every two-metre segment of water main.
For that purpose, he contacted the Communitech Data Concierge with several requests. Through Communitech and the City of Kitchener, Mehrdad obtained various city basemaps with precise, relevant information regarding leakage, flooding, weather and asset history. Using this information to build his initial model, Mehrdad then worked with the City of London, evaluating his technology with asset and operations managers.
After determining that the out-of-sample predictions were reliable and accurate, it became clear that the models were not geographically limited and could be transferred between cities. Waterlix is working with the City of Guelph as well, implementing a similar project and gathering more spatial information. Unlike alternative technologies, Waterlix’s platform doesn’t need sensors or trenches, resulting in drastic cost savings and simple, scalable implementation. The Waterlix implementation in the City of London was awarded one of the Top 15 Clean Tech Projects by the organization Clean50 for the year 2019. In early 2019, Waterlix was awarded the prestigious $50,000 OCE Customer Demonstration Program grant in partnership with IBM.
Learn more about Waterlix
Contact our Data Concierge
