Artificial Intelligence makes for smarter wastewater

As water becomes more precious, tech businesses are finding a lucrative new niche in smartening up wastewater treatment with artificial intelligence.

Wastewater-treatment plants are studded with electronic sensors and controls; these usually work independently and require monitoring by humans. Now companies are applying AI to integrate and analyze the data from these various nodes to detect leaks, spot unusual pressure changes, and flag equipment that’s failing or has broken down.

IBM’s “Intelligent Water” software targets big municipal treatment plants and public water-delivery systems. The start-up Pluto AI is targeting smaller operations that can make a purchase without the red tape of city bureaucracies. TaKaDu, out of Israel, is already working in London, England, and parts of Chile.

TRENDPOST: Local governments – and, increasingly, entrepreneurs – are no longer taking public water for granted. As climate becomes more extreme and water supplies less reliable, opportunities will continue to emerge for investments in water conservation and management.

As Gerald Celente wrote in his book, Trends 2000: “Any water-supply-related business represents a sound investment for the foreseeable future – water sources, purification systems and supplies, distribution and marketing.”

Today, this is truer than ever.