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Water Management
Digital twin for smart water networks Gregg Herrin, vice-president, water infrastructure at Bentley Systems and Frank Braunschweig, director of product management, water infrastructure at Bentley Systems, tell Abhishek Paul why – and how – water utilities need to invest in digital twin solutions. ARNESSING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES remains vital for all industries to stay relevant, keep up with the times and improve efficiencies during the pandemic. The water sector is no different. Capitalising on digitalisation is more crucial for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region where 12 of the world’s most waterstressed countries are located. As an essential service, water utilities are facing a multitude of challenges such as water scarcity and loss, financing for capital improvements, increasing electricity costs and ageing infrastructure. Precisely, to address these problems and provide reliable, resilient, and affordable water systems, utilities need adoption of digital twin solutions, according to Gregg Herrin, vicepresident, water infrastructure at Bentley Systems. Put simply, a digital twin is a digital representation of a physical asset, process or system, which allows understanding and modelling its performance. A digital twin for water enables utilities to visualise infrastructure assets across the entire asset lifecycle, track change, and perform analysis to optimise asset performance. “One of the key things about a digital twin, in general, is their ability to help utilities make better decisions. And those could be decisions related to design, construction, pump specifications, operations and maintenance,” says Herrin, who leads the team responsible for Bentley’s hydraulics and hydrology applications. “If you make a mistake with a decision in the digital world, it does not cost you anything. But if you make a mistake with a decision in the real world, it can literally cost you lives,” says Herrin. For nearly four decades, Bentley Systems has been designing and developing tools
Photo Credit: Bentley Systems
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Transform system data into improved decisions and optimised infrastructure assets with digital twin technology.
Photo Credit : Bentley Systems
intended for engineers to carry out engineering project works of utilities. Typically those works included master planning projects, capital planning projects, design projects and so on, he mentions. Talking about the Bentley Systems portfolio, Herrin points out, products such as WaterGEMS for the water distribution network, SewerGEMS for sanitary and
Frank Braunschweig, director of product management, water infrastructure, Bentley Systems.
Technical Review Middle East - Issue Five 2020
sewer combined collection systems, StormCAD, CivilStorm and PondPack for doing stormwater management and pond design are really oriented towards traditional engineering tools for engineers. To make water networks efficient and smarter, Bentley has developed a digital twin solution OpenFlows WaterSight. “What digital twinning does is that it takes engineering capabilities and connects them with information technologies like GIS, customer building data and operation technologies like SCADA systems. It brings them together in a way that the whole utility can now benefit from. And that’s what OpenFlows WaterSight solution is about,” he adds. Explaining more about what WaterSight can do and who uses it, Frank Braunschweig, director of product management, water infrastructure at Bentley Systems, says, “Our new water sight product is new digital twin solution for water operations. It helps water utilities and engineering departments to perform their daily operations and longterm planning. It brings together information from different sources and integrates into a www.technicalreview.me
