TM R&D and Air Selangor partner on an ‘Internet of Water’ that optimizes usage, efficiency and more

• Who: TM R&D and Air Selangor
• What: Developed the Smart Water Integrated Management System (SWIMS) – an Internet of Water (IoW) solution – as part of a major digital transformation initiative to optimize OpEx and CapEx
• How: Using TM Forum’s Digital Maturity Model to assess digital readiness, optimize resources and improve planning
• Results: Increased meter reading accuracy by 10-15% through 100% automation, while visibility into usage improved 3,000%

Water management has been a top priority for Malaysia’s federal and state governments for over 20 years. Now the internet of things (IoT) is providing a host of new tools for optimizing usage, pinpointing leaks and more. Air Selangor (AIS) is responsible for water treatment and distribution for over 8.4 million people the state of Selangor and the neighboring territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Cyberjaya. AIS partnered with Telekom Malaysia Research and Development (TM R&D), an innovation hub of the Telekom Malaysia group, on the Smart Water Integrated Management System (SWIMS). SWIMS is an Internet of Water (IoW) solution, essentially doing for water what IoT does for myriad other industries and verticals, including electric utilities, transportation, smart cities and factory automation, to enable deep, new insights into operations, and the tools to act on those insights.

SWIMS offers end-to-end smart water management that improves non-revenue water management, optimizes repair and replacement of aging infrastructure, and improves response to weather events such as water level and quality. It is developed as a network-technology-agnostic platform that caters to all types of IoT devices, platforms and connectivity.

AIS’ multi-phase digital transformation project is building an autonomous network that’s the foundation for automating manual tasks such as meter reading and data logging, as well as providing invaluable customer behavior and predictive insights. “SWIMS is a network-technology-agnostic digital solution that enables AIS tools to efficiently read and store any customer meter data, providing maximum benefit from this information,” says Mohd Yusri Abu Samah, Head, Meter Management Section, AIS. “It also reduces field service costs through centralized meter reading capabilities and significantly reduces the likelihood of errors when utilizing data from smart devices. “SWIMS also lets customers change how and when data is collected. It then deploys the most cost-effective solutions without affecting network latency or infrastructure. Its cloud-hosted offering provides customers with faster implementation, innovation and enhanced security, as well the ability to host and analyze terabytes of data and then leverage it to improve Air Selangor grid operations.” The potential savings are significant. “Network and operational expenditure form the bulk of Air Selangor’s expenses, which means an immediate response is needed for sustainable profitability in the future,” says Dr. Hizamel M. Hizan, SWIMS Technical Product Owner, TM R&D. “In 2018, Air Selangor launched its vision for its digital transformation journey, which focuses on three main objectives in its water operation: real-time monitoring and prediction, digital working culture, and empowering its customers.”

An Internet of Water SWIMS is a holistic ‘Internet of Water’ ecosystem solution. The diagram below depicts the solution, consisting of a water distribution network, wireless connectivity, an IoT platform and end-user application layer. Water meters that are enabled with long range (LoRa) and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) together with the SWIMS smart solution, are being deployed commercially for water operators such as Air Selangor. In the long run, this will potentially increase their operational efficiency and market profitability.

Phase 1 of SWIMS began In October 2018 and took a year to complete, focusing on 3,300 sites in Selangor’s Sepang district. Each water meter was automated to support remote reading, control, maintenance, analytics and more. SWIMS also uses prescriptive and predictive algorithms to identify high usage, changes in consumer behaviors, leaks, theft and problems related to aging infrastructure.

SWIMS phase 2 began in October 2019 and is scheduled to finish by September 2020. The SWIMS network currently uses a hybrid of LoRA and NB-IoT. Phase 2 includes 5G cellular, whose higher speeds, lower latency and other capabilities could enable additional applications—including ones that generate revenue instead of only reducing costs through lower OpEx. “By 2025, 5G could add 6-9% to consumer revenue and 18-22% to enterprise revenue, according to studies by AT Kearney and others,” Dr. Hizamel says. “TM R&D and AIS are primed to realize this revenue potential via SWIMS.” SWIMS is being tested as 5G use case pilot trials. The smart water meters, coupled with the SWIMS solution, were successfully installed and currently are running at consumer and enterprise premises in Malaysia’s city of Subang Jaya and northern island of Langkawi. Meanwhile, SWIMS-enabled water quality and water level instruments are being tested in Langkawi for a local operator through Telekom Malaysia’s 5G network.

TM Forum helps to analyze digital readiness

The Digital Maturity Model (DMM) has six dimensions: customer, strategy, technology, operations, culture and data, each of which has a number of aspects that in turn are broken down into criteria against which organizations can test their digital maturity. In its initial discussion and workshops with AIS, TM R&D identified how the utility envisioned the roles that technology and people would play in its digital transformation. TM R&D then applied the DMM evaluation template across the core dimensions, sub-dimensions and their respective individual criteria.

“The weighted average score of 2.4 (out of 5) was recorded, with gaps mainly on technology, digital automation and analytics capability,” Dr. Hizamel says. “Amongst the SWIMS enhancements and other digital solutions that we offered for consideration are dedicated solutions to improve workforce deployment via digital automation and analytics, digital water plant automation using SCADA-IoT, consumer analytics and integration of 5G with machine learning.”

“DMM has definitely aided both parties. It’s helped TM R&D better understand and be the catalyst in AIS’s digital aspirations. It benefits AIS by further enhancing its digital blueprint by acknowledging gaps and utilizing TM R&D expertise in digital solutions. Looking ahead, the SWIMS team is pushing for strategic planning that includes SWIMS’ integration with AIS’s workforce and future adoptions of 5G, industrial IoT and machine learning. TM Forum’s AI Maturity Model and readiness is another area we are closely looking into to help develop these use cases,” Dr. Hizamel concluded.