Water Simulators Meeting

30 January 2017 at STFC, RAL, Harwell Campus

Background

The UK Water Partnership’s Water and Cities Task Force identified that an integrated, holistic picture of urban water could provide the optimal balance to deliver benefits to communities and local economies and that this could be achieved through the development of urban water simulators.

To take this initiative forwards, the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) sponsored an Urban Water Simulators workshop in March 2016 with experts from industry, government and academia.

The Future Visions for Water and Cities – A Thought Piece[i]highlighted the potentially valuable role that simulators and demonstrators could play in developing, testing and evaluating innovative ideas that could shape water and cities in the future.

Purpose of this meeting

To build on the Urban Water Simulators[ii]workshop held in March 2016, this meeting aimed to discuss potential opportunities and the interests of participantsin taking forwards the key recommendations and actions from the workshop in March 2016.

This report presents a summary of key points, in note form, from the presentations and working groups at the meeting.

Presentations

Tony Rachwal - UK Water Partnership

  1. Lots of water research is funded by the Research Councils, but there is no direct theme for water.
  2. Water is a cross-cutting theme and, therefore, dialogue across the Research Councils is needed.
  3. The UK is not so good at using applied research, getting to solutions and testing them.
  4. Innovate UK can support demonstration activities, but these are usually focused on Government priorities.
  5. There is no water catapult at the moment.
  6. Water needs to be more connected across Government departments eg. BEIS, DIT and DCLG to enable access to a global water market of $500bn.
  7. The water sector does not have a high profile of big business companies (where pharmaceuticals has Merck, GlaxoSmithKline etc.)
  8. 20% of the UK’s GDP is underpinned by water
  9. UK Water Partnership (UKWP) Task Force on water and cities has developed a Vision for Water and Cities and contributed to the Foresight ‘Future Cities’.
  10. This meeting builds on a workshop held in March 2016 at Daresbury, which developed a vision, definition and actions for urban water simulators.

Jim Hall, University of Oxford

  1. The National Infrastructure Report by CST in 2009 led to Infrastructure UK being set up and a government plan for infrastructure being developed. Subsequent plans set out the long-term vision for the UK on infrastructure. A report on infrastructure assessment will be produced in 2018.
  2. The UK Collabatorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) is a £138m government investment to enable the UK to develop a world class national infrastructure capability to de-risk, help prioritise and provide evidence for future national infrastructure investments.
  3. Water UK has convened work on the long term water resources planning framework.
  4. ITRC (Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium) is an EPSRC funded programme. Total of £10m funding to develop national capability for modelling and analysis of infrastructure systems. It has led to a family of infrastructure system of systems modelling platform and database - NISMOD. These look at long-term planning, decision processes, projections, scenarios and economic benefits.
  5. Next programme is MISTRAL, which will expand the scale and reach of the NISMOD system. Also looking at downscaling modelling to the household level.
  6. UKCRIC funding is now managed by EPSRC. Within this, an £8m programme to develop the National Infrastructure database, modelling, simulation and visualisation facility will be based at Harwell. Need to consult and design the facility. Innovate UK will help by convening consultation events across different sectors.
  7. Water – Atkins use the national resource system for water resources long-term planning. This is being extended from the South-East to include water supply in England and Wales. There is a database of wastewater treatment plants, but no explicit representation of the sewer network. Surface water is included. The EA Investment strategy considers wider flooding perspectives.
  8. UKCRIC – related water themes include green infrastructure, buried infrastructure (Sheffield) and the urban observatory (Newcastle).
  9. Updating the databases in the long-term – currently there are 4-5 years of funds. Funding beyond this period needs to be discussed.

Adam Cambridge - Atkins

  1. It will be a challenge to take forwardthe development of water simulators.
  2. Obstacles to overcome: complexity, proprietary software, uncertainties, industry is siloed, research can be disconnected, pressurised economy, ineffective at exporting globally, balancing transformation with safeguarding employment, loss of engineering know-how, culture and language in policy, trust in technology, liabilities and insurance risks.
  3. Development of water simulators requires an organisedprogramme over a long time.
  4. Opportunities – there are three interrelated cogs for business opportunities: digital water enabling growth, international growth (export services), sustainable growth. Need to understand the societal context too.
  5. There is a radical changing role for consultancies to become trusted independent advisors.
  6. Adam is preparing a Digital Water Strategy for Atkins. He aims togalvanisethe industry to develop this for the UK.Adam ran a CIWEM workshop ‘Exploring a Big Digital Future for Water and the Environment’– the outputs will be put on the CIWEM web site start exploring the issues.
  7. A lot of money has gone into smart cities and this is big business for companies, such as, IBM and Siemens, whilst blue green cities suffer from a lack of funding. The aims of each of these are similar and should converge on the theme of ‘liveable’ cities.
  8. An integrated industry programme is required as the development of water simulators will involve more than one organisation. Awhite paper may be needed to progress this initiative. In March, aim to organise a meeting to see how this progamme needs to be configured.

David Butler – University of Exeter

  1. Update on water demonstrators – existing and planned demonstrators.
  2. What’s the difference between a case study, demonstrators, observatory? There are a number of demonstrators in the UK, either small case studies or larger city demonstrators with local authority backing.
  3. A demonstrator workshop in March 2016 discussed some of the issues such as: access to sites, data access, who owns the data/IP. It makes sense to link demonstrators in with Future Cities and UKCRIC.
  4. The UKCRICprogrammeincludes an element on demonstrators. This includes the urban observatory at Newcastle University, using real-time data and a data portal. The University of Strathclyde has a city observatory.
  5. The Twenty65 programme is working across the water sector to tailor water systems to ensure they deliver sustainably. Partners include the universities of Sheffield, Exeter, Imperial, Manchester, Newcastle and Reading. The programme has a demonstrator element to it and a hub to innovate and accelerate innovation, which aims to develop flexible adaptive systems. David’s team is working on retrofitting sustainable drainage systems and systems for monitoring them – using the Birmingham demonstrator, which is championed by Birmingham City Council and Severn Trent.
  6. A new project, the Urban Flood Resilience Consortium, has two demonstrators associated with it. (1) Newcastle – which looks at urban flood resilience and (2)Ebbsfleet – a new garden city being developed on the Thames Estuary. The local action alliance has been integral in garnering stakeholder support.
  7. There has been no impetus as yet to link any of the demonstrators together.

Jonathan Abra – Innovate UK

  1. Innovate UK has an infrastructure systems call open now. Competition opportunities have been streamlined to enable applicants to know what opportunities are coming up. The programme has been streamlined into four key themes now.
  2. Industrial Strategy Challenges Fund – has come from a green paper in January 2017. Up to £2bn per year additional funding from Government in eight sectors. Matched funding will be required. Innovate UK is consulting with stakeholders to establish what the global market is in each sector, what the research strengths are, and the likely business commitment to it. The first challenges might be launched in March 2017.
  3. The Integrated and Sustainable Cities is an additional theme. There has not been strong representation in this area so far. Does the UK Water partnership have a role in supporting this area?
  4. Advanced computing is another possible area of interest for water simulators.
  5. KTN can help with partnering and collaboration activities.
  6. KTN is potentially exploring a catapult type investment for water. If this is successful, then an event will be held to invite interested parties to discuss what the catapult should look like. It will be dependent on matched funding from industry (resource or in kind) of £10-15m per year for 10 years. The case for the catapult will need to demonstrate that there is strategic capacity and capability in the UK, that economic wealth could be created, and it is knowledge based.
  7. Atkins is looking at the growth aspect, eg. providing more jobs and houses for Local Authority Councils, and identifying how to make land more deployable. Atkins has examples and case studies if needed. There needs to be a business model for exporting services attached to the catapult.

Mike Jones – Thames Water

  1. Water resource management planning is one aspect that Thames Water manages. The diagram in the presentation slides showsthe tools and models that are used in water resource planning and how they are joined up – but it is not quite straightforward in practice. The diagram shows where there are good links and where improvements are needed. For example, there is not a good link between groundwater and systems model. The information from these tools and models is used to look at a whole range of scenarios to try to establish what the future will look like. Thames Water’s next business plan will extend to 2100. A resource emulator enables a range of scenarios to be assessed quickly.
  2. System resilience is important to understand,eg. energy, drought and security. Especially external factors that the business can’t control very well. Models are used to understand risks.
  3. Thames Water needs to deal with droughts to floods and everything in between. This is best done through the use of scenarios, to help decide what risk you want to operate under and what customers will pay.
  4. Strongest modelling linkage is economic modelling – eg. social issues, environmental, resilience – this is quite a recent development.
  5. There are a huge number of tools that don’t link very well together and it makes it difficult to grapple with the range of scenarios that we should be dealing with. There are a number of static and time variant models. The whole process starts in November to gather data and an initial view is usually developed by May – ie. it takes 6 months to process the information. The process is linear, which means that if you wanted to change something, then the whole process would take another 6 months to run – so it is difficult to iterate.
  6. As a business, Thames Water needs to have credible long term investment plans – the current plan is good on the basis of what has been done. But the question is could it be better? The challenge is to develop a credible plan to communicate with a huge range of stakeholders, eg. owners, regulators, customers, challenge groups, so a simulator is needed that could bring all these things together and articulate some of the challenges that are faced as a business and what the best solutions might be. Simulators would not necessarily a plug and play approach, there may need to be more emulators. Water simulators could be a large framework of tools, some cut down versions and emulators. Simulators will provide anopportunity for a number of different groups to use them. Some customer groups are very challenging and even develop their own rival models.
  7. It has been difficult to work with urban planners - simulators would help put things together.
  8. In the business there are less than 50 people working in this area (water resource planning) but there is a large amount of external consultancy work. However, this is only one part of it. The resilience group, for example, has around another 20 people. How would this scale up across the UK?
  9. Business needs highlight the need for more integration and understanding in dealing with such a complex issue – so where do the simulators start or stop? A lot of areas started as separate areas of study. We could try to look at who cares? Perhaps start on which areas need to be improved first?
  10. An integrated water management strategy approach could be taken, for example, Ebbsfleet is trying this.
  11. To estimate the economic impact in terms of staff resource, we could take some real things that people are working on and work out how much is being spent on that area.

Kevin Smith & Katharine Hollinshead – STFC

  1. Introduction to STFC – an overview of the areas of science and technology that STFC invests in and the large facilities that STFC supports. STFC has its own computing facilities – there are two mainareas; (1) Hartree Centre – which enablesindustry to use high performance computing facilities and (2) Jasmine – super data clusters which are located next to a large data store. This is managed with NERC and used for environmental data and modelling. The advantage is that there is no need to move large sets of data across the internet.
  2. STFC is interested in how to apply computing technologies in differentinterdisciplinary areas - water simulators are one area that could make use of these technologies.
  3. STFC’s 21st century challengesprogrammehas a wider range of themes coming through. New funding streams Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Newton Fund are part of the Official Development Assistance (ODA)and have broader themes. STFC is interested in applying STFC capabilities to tackle complex challenges and identifying the highest potential to address global challenges that use the UK’s expertise. This includes addressing themes, such as, urban living, water, resilience andagri-tech.
  4. STFC has developed a toolkit of approaches for the research community. STFC needs to engage with other communities in theresearch area, as many of the challenges are interdisciplinary in nature. STFC Future’s Team has been developing partnerships with other research councils,government and agencies, to see where STFC can engage and where their contribution can be of most value.There is a rapidly changing landscape with the advent of the industrialstrategy and ODA funding(GCRF and Newton fund). Another STFC aim is to maximise the return on technology that is developed through STFC support. STFC would like to build further links with catapults.
  5. Earth System models started off as 100km by 100km grid resolution. The ES models development could be used as an exemplar for water simulators. Water simulators would need to be at a higher resolution to look at the household and street -level and combine socio-economics and societal factors.

Simon Gardner – NERC

  1. NERC supports environmental research and innovation in the research community, including in several research centres (CEH, BGS, BAS, NOC, NCEO, NCAS). Several data centres supported by NERC hold vast environmental datasets. A survey on NERC dataestimated that around 4000 TB of data are being held in the data centres.Aside from the data, the NERC research community has a lot of expertise in managing and using data, and modelling.
  2. In terms of developing a high level strategy, an idea being discussed by NERC’s Council is ‘instrumenting the environment’. This could include a network of demonstrators, systems and sensors, building a resilient economy, and big data.
  3. The Science and Innovation Network (SIN) provides an international network that facilitates collaboration and partnerships with around 90 countries in a range of thematic areas. There is scope for collaborating across the Research Councils and with the SINin areas, such as,the use of demonstrators and smart networks.
  4. The Industrial Strategy provides a number of hooks for water simulators, including, urban test beds, demonstrators, simulators, smart networks and sensors.

Progressing Actions from Water Simulators Workshop

Water Simulators Vision - The meeting agreed that the definition and vision would be broadened from ‘urban’ to include catchments. The term ‘Water Simulators’ will be used to encapsulate this.

The timing and opportunity to take forward this area is ripe. The UK has capabilities in place and could build on these. Water and infrastructure are big global markets.

The Urban Water Simulators workshop in March 2016 defined 3 recommendations and 10 actions that could be taken forward by partners. To progress these actions, meeting participants were divided into two groups. The Research group considered actions (a), (b), (c), (e) and (j), and the Business and Innovation group considered actions (d), (f), (g), and (i).

A summary of the discussion in each group follows:

Research Working Group

  • A scoping study / audit / cluster analysis is required, this needs to be allied with a stakeholder analysis to understand needs and interests.
  • A literature review would not deliver what is required to take this area forwards and would require a lot of effort/resource.
  • Need to understand what capabilities exist, what work is already going on, and what the desirability for water simulators would be.
  • Some stakeholder groups that need to be engaged: planners and developers are critical users for water simulators. Insurance companies may also be interested in understanding risks and uncertainties better.
  • Some mapping of what is being done in this area has been undertaken by the Water and Cities project, Water JPI, Urban Europe, Jim Hall’s group.
  • A small working group needs to set out the scoping study. The scoping study needs to be an independent and critical assessment of what problems need to be focused on, the opportunities, capabilities and vision. The study could be funded by a collaborative effort from partners. The cost of the scoping study would depend on the options it aims to deliver. It would be imperative to get commitment from key partners to take this forwards.
  • Demonstrators - There is a parallel need for demonstrators to provide the data. Cross-linkages need to be in place between the modelling and data streams.Demonstrators are critical to making the case for water simulators. The case for demonstrators tends to be user driven and targeted.
  • ODA funding - There is a massive potential for using water simulators to contribute to the sustainable development goals. Any bid to this funding stream would have to respond and be shaped to the criteria. NERC is considering their single data service for GCRF funding.
  • Engaging others - Need to get this topic talked about at influential levels, eg. Minister of Water, Therese Coffey, Global Water Research Coalition (GWRC), UKWIR, Royal Town and Planning Institute, Consultancies, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), Insurance industry.

Business and Innovation Working Group