Water is life. This is a statement of fact – and a daily reminder of the responsibility our team at Innovyze, now an Autodesk company, has carried with us each day for thirty-five years. Therefore, we innovate, relentlessly, to ensure we are providing the best technology to support our customers and the billions of people who depend on them to thrive worldwide.
The technology we develop is purpose-built and helps our customers provide clean drinking water, treat wastewater, and enable cities and municipalities to monitor and manage their systems – to identify challenges before they become crises. Down time is not an option considering how critical water is to life.
Info360: Managing water from cloud to sea
Managing the safe use of water from cloud to sea was at one time a figurative way of explaining what Innovyze technology does. This became the literal reflection of our work when we introduced Info360, a modern Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud platform for water utilities. Aging infrastructure, increasingly limited natural and financial resources, and disconnected technology systems put greater pressures on water infrastructure operation than previously experienced. The Info360 platform creates and powers a digital twin using the data created from planning through construction resulting in better, always-up-to-date insight for operations and maintenance.
Introducing Info360 Asset
As the Info360 platform expands, we know an important key to successfully managing water infrastructure is understanding how the system and assets are performing. Info360 Asset, now available in beta, is the latest product to join the Info360 cloud platform. Info360 Asset serves as a cloud-based tool for the water industry’s condition and performance monitoring and risk assessment processes.
Info360 Asset will help asset management practitioners review, store, and manage all inspection data effectively, assess conditions conveniently, and determine risks accurately, all from a single cloud-based platform. It also provides non-technical stakeholders with an easy-to-understand web-environment they can access, so they understand maintenance and renewal decisions.
If we want to help utilities maximize the use of financial resources and protect water resources, operators must remain informed with critical, accurate, and usable data continuously at their fingertips.
Today, like other industries, utilities are creating volumes of data, inspection data for example, but this data is often not converted to useful, valuable information. Without actionable data, the ability to clean and maintain assets – the pipes, treatment facilities, and other parts of the water management process – we cannot rely on consistent and efficient delivery of water to our faucets, and showers, or the removal and treatment of wastewater from our homes.
To make matters worse, the operational funds local municipalities and utilities spend for inspecting and managing assets is wasted – and dealing with inspection data takes too long. Consider this, Closed Circuit TV video is often used to provide valuable data, but our customers tell us CCTV videos can sit in the van or contractor hard drive for weeks and at times utilities cannot find the right media to figure out which assets survey data relate to. The investment in capturing CCTV data is wasted because of inefficient processes.
We urge you to sign up for the beta program to learn more and be one of the first to know when Info360 Asset is commercially available.
Creating solutions
Nearly two-trillion dollars are required to address water infrastructure needs globally by 2030 and the water industry of today cannot meet the needs of the future on its own. The math just doesn’t work out. For example, while water utilities’ annual capital expenditures are expected to double to $11 billion by 2030 the industry loses $14 billion annually worldwide because of the nine trillion gallons of water lost due to aging and leaky pipes.
So, we will keep working to deliver the solutions needed to ensure the water we need for the future is safe and reliable.
With 60 percent of utilities globally expected to undergo a digital transformation by 2025, now is the time for advancements in technology and investments in the tools needed to support utilities.