Janelcy Alferes will be speaking about digital water at the forthcoming Water Horizons conference. Here, she talks about the challenges for the sector and what she hopes the event will achieve. By Erika Yarrow-Soden.
‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’ is a new conference on the IWA calendar, taking place on 24-25 September in London, UK. Organised by IWA Conferences Ltd, this event will bring together global leaders in the water sector to explore the latest innovations and strategies for building resilient, sustainable water utilities, with a particular focus on opportunities for technology, digital transformation and regulatory compliance.
“The technological opportunities for digital water are exploding, but there are still challenges in taking them from research and practice through to implementation,” says Janelcy Alferes, who is R&D project leader monitoring technology and digital water, WaterKlimaatHub – VITO, Belgium, and Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA). “This conference will be a great platform to discuss this.”
Facilitating the digital transformation
IWA is playing an important role in this, and Water Horizons 2025 is the latest part of the Association’s drive to help water practitioners grasp the very best that digital technologies can offer, to deliver sustainable, smart and efficient water systems.
“IWA is already doing a lot to facilitate this,” says Alferes. “It really recognises the value of digital solutions and how it can support many aspects of water management.”
She references IWA’s impressive Digital Programme, the three editions of IWA Digital Water Summits in Bilbao, Spain, and IWA’s Specialist Groups that are promoting the use of digital solutions. She says: “There is a lot of support for really pushing the idea of finding digital solutions to improve our water systems. And there is increasing interest in finding synergies between different Specialist Groups.”
As Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on ICA, Alferes is conscious of the potential for IWA’s membership to come together to develop opportunities and enhance the role and power of existing and emerging technologies.
Advanced technologies
Focusing on how water utilities can future-proof their services while advancing their climate and carbon goals, Water Horizons 2025 will open with the theme of ‘Technology opportunities, digital transformation and the regulatory horizon’. This first day of the two-day programme will explore how utilities are embracing advanced technologies – from AI and IoT to smart water networks and digital twins – to drive operational efficiency, compliance and system resilience.
The second day will build on the theme of day one, focusing on ‘Building resilient water systems and advancing net zero solutions’, shifting the focus to implementation and how utilities can apply innovation to reduce emissions and build low-carbon, circular water systems.
Alferes sees Water Horizons 2025 as an opportunity to look at the new technologies that are available and focus on how they can be used most effectively to improve water systems and the management of water resources in applications across drinking water, wastewater and industrial processes.
“It’s about how to make use of the technology,” she explains. “I’ll cover different aspects, ranging from sensors to digital twins and support tools, and how to bring those tools forward to help support decision-making.”
Stakeholder engagement
Alferes also highlights the importance of collaboration between stakeholders, and the need to avoid looking at water in isolation. She says: “If we are to face the challenges that we have today and those that we will have tomorrow, we really need to consider water as a part of our ecosystems, and to consider the important links between water and energy, food and agriculture.
“We can’t just consider water in a silo. We need to collaborate with the different stakeholders – with the water utilities, the technology providers, researchers, and the community and municipalities. It is important to take into account the different parts of the puzzle.”
There are still gaps that need to be bridged to enable digital water to be as effective as it can be, she adds, and much of that is to do with taking research from theory into practice and facilitating cross-sector collaboration and learning.
“We need efforts to be made in different directions, but I think we are going along the right track,” says Alferes. “My interest is in helping to bridge these gaps and enabling research and innovation to be applicable in practice.”
Water Horizons 2025 provides the ideal opportunity, whether you are starting out on your net zero journey or looking to network and share experiences with others building resilience into their systems, to future-proof a water sector facing the challenges of climate change, urbanisation, and increasing population and consumption.
The challenges may be great, but, if we work smarter, the rewards will be too.
Join us at ‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’ to be part of this transformation.
More information
Visit www.waterhorizonsevents.org/home?event-key=wh2025 to find out more about ‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’.
