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OPERATIONAL FLEXIBILITY
Connecting Infrastructure's
Dots to Solve Today's Urban
Management Issues
Connected infrastructure offers a holistic approach to creating a smarter, greener,
and more livable world.
Gary Wong
M
ore people are moving to urban
areas than ever before, even as
the impacts of climate change
are being increasingly felt on many different
levels. As urban infrastructure is
being strained in new and often subtle
ways, smart technologies can enable
smoother operations and faster response
to challenges.
A holistic approach to urban and
regional infrastructure can deliver a
transformative effect. Advanced digital
systems now support just such a comprehensive
view. By bringing together
the development and management of
different physical systems and networks
in a given area, they can enhance overall
efficiency, resilience, and sustainability.
Synergies Drive Infrastructural
Resilience and Efficiency
A power utility's largest customer, for example,
is often the area's water authority.
Closer synergies between the two
make sense.
California Water Service (CWS), a utility
serving four U.S. states, was faced
with slow and inefficient data processes,
high energy costs and limited insight
into energy consumption, changing
regulatory requirements, and stringent
environmental, social, and governance
targets. Using a cloud-based solution
infused with artificial intelligence, it was
able to automatically collect and analyze
utility data with the goal of tracking
power consumption and energy demand
change management.
With the benefit of actionable insights
in real time, CWS realized significant
financial savings from manual data collection
and input, it could better forecast
peak energy consumption and market
participation. Alongside, compliance reporting
improved while advanced analytics
obtained by combining billing usage
data with supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) pumping data pro28
vide
strategic direction for the future.
In short, a win-win for both the power
and water utilities, leading to cost savings
and efficiency gains for both parties
while contributing to the broader goal of
reducing consumption and building more
sustainable cities.
Such a nexus approach can be extended
to cover all infrastructural systems
within the area-such as in energy, water
supply, telecommunications, waste
management, or transport. By pooling
operational data, utilities and other infrastructural
entities can understand current
conditions, predict future demand,
and adjust operations to reduce peaks
and loads. Enabling this sort of crosssector
collaboration-across multiple
critical infrastructural communities-is
the latest infrastructural asset: an integrated
command-and-control center that
combines internal and external services
for ecosystem synergies and growth.
The Infrastructure Nexus Enhances
Livability
Within a single pane of glass, an integrated
" system of systems " brings
together operational information from
multiple data streams in real time to anticipate
and resolve issues even before
they surface. It synchronizes various
resources and processes for seamless
operations and supports more strategic
decision-making.
Atal Nagar-Nava Raipur, India's first
metropolitan greenfield smart city, has
seen firsthand how collating and consolidating
data from a multitude of instrumentation
devices across its urban
infrastructure can enhance livability,
workability, and sustainability. Planned
as the new capital for Chhattisgarh state,
Nava Raipur united systems for smart
governance, intelligent transport, utility
management, city surveillance,
intelligent
building management, and smart
network and data centers into a cloudbased
integrated command and control
www.powermag.com
center (ICCC), accessible through a single-pane-of-glass
interface.
This connected industrial ecosystem
helped Nava Raipur stay resilient during
the recent coronavirus crisis. With realtime
insight into all the city's critical infrastructure
systems, authorities could
match supply and demand with greater
accuracy, improving decision-making
in emergencies and slashing critical response
time by 60% on average.
Integrating Infrastructure
Future-Proofs the World
Around the world, governments must
address the intersecting challenges of
the climate crisis, aging infrastructure,
and evolving labor markets-all while
faced with shrinking budgets. A systemof-systems
approach provides the transformative
backbone needed to tackle
these issues. Breaking down silos and
promoting cross-functional collaboration
futureproofs industrial operations,
unlocks innovation, and optimizes resource
use.
Certainly, the transition to integrated
infrastructure will require tackling regulatory
hurdles and technological interoperability,
as well as innovative financing
mechanisms and supportive policy
frameworks. Yet, the benefits of integration
are increasingly evident.
Singing from the same song sheet, as
it were, enables us to detect issues early,
saving costs and resources while enhancing
reliability. Such a smart, integrated
approach promotes resource efficiency
and sustainability. Integrated infrastructure
improves quality of life for urban residents
and reduces users' environmental
footprint. Ultimately, investing in integrated
and smart infrastructure is crucial for
building cities and countries that are better
equipped to meet the needs of both
current and future generations. ■
-Gary Wong is the global segment
leader of Power, Utilities, and
Infrastructure at AVEVA.
POWER | August 2024
http://www.powermag.com
pwr_august-2024

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