Das iwe-Institut für Wasser und Energiemanagement an der Hochschule Hof hat eine Metastudie zum Stand der Digitalisierung der Wasserwirtschaft in den deutschsprachigen Ländern durchgeführt. Das Fazit: Die Digitalisierung ist zu einem festen Bestandteil technologischer Lösungen und strategischer Entscheidungen geworden. In einer dreiteiligen Serie wird die WasserWirtschaft über die Ergebnisse der Studie berichten. In dieser Ausgabe beginnen die Autoren mit einer Übersicht: Wo finden sich Digitalisierungselemente verstärkt wieder und welche digitalen Lösungen dominieren aktuell?

When it comes to addressing climate change, water is at the centre of many aspects and measures. Especially in urban areas where the negative consequences of heavy rainfall events and prolonged dry periods are increasing worldwide. In the future, urban water management will have to examine water use in terms of its various objectives and provide alternative water resources for different purposes (groundwater, river water, rainwater, treated wastewater, etc.). The technological networking of water management systems requires intelligent and digital systems to manage the challenges of the future. Similarly, the contribution of water management to global CO2 reduction through more efficient procedural treatment processes will only succeed with adequate digital systems ((Balogun, 2020), (Kröhling, 2017), (Randhahn, 2020)) Researchers at Hof University of Applied Sciences have investigated the status quo of digitization within the first meta-study in the German-speaking water industry (WaterExe 4.0 project) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The research was conducted with four methodologically different sub-surveys (literature and market research, survey, expert interview and workshops). 120 industry participants took part in an online survey and 30 water sector experts were interviewed.

Innovative digital developments from industry like autonomous machine controls based on intelligent data acquisition, collection and evaluation, promises better adapting municipal infrastructure systems to changing conditions. When the technology initiative KOMMUNAL 4.0 was developed as an idea in 2015, digitalization was not a central topic in water management. As Industry 4.0 was present everywhere in the media, the idea of transferring suitable parts of the basic idea of Industry 4.0 to municipal water management was born. In particular, it was necessary to implement consistent IT and IoT communication at all levels of water management tasks. The aim was not only to create a uniform structure for networking a wide variety of applications, but also to round off KOMMUNAL 4.0’s complete range of services with IoT for existing and newly developed products and solutions. Regardless of whether it concerns measurement and data technology applications, smart machines, SCADA or asset management systems, all application solutions contain a standardized network core that guarantees standard data communication and also complying with safety and cybersecurity requirements.