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Jaime Barba Sevillano is the chief executive of go-aigua, a provider of smart water utility IoT solutions and the name of a software suite of smart solutions dedicated to the improvement of efficiency of water industry processes. Bill Ingle, a senior analyst at Beecham Research, interviewed him to learn more about the company and the needs of smart water utilities.

Bill Ingle: Please can you introduce us to go- aigua?

Jaime Barba Sevillano: go-aigua emerged from the deep digital transformation of its parent company, Global Omnium, that began more than ten years ago. Global Omnium, based in Valencia, Spain, was founded in 1890 and manages the collection, treatment and distribution of drinking water in more than 400 Spanish cities. go-aigua’s solutions were developed and refined in actual use cases at those installations before coming to market.

BI: What solutions does go-aigua offer?

JBS: go-aigua offers six solutions; an IoT analytics platform and five specialised solutions:

Nexus Integra is a robust and agile IoT analytics platform that allows you to manage, experiment and get the most from massive amounts of data. It has been developed to enable the ingestion of information from multiple sources and technologies, allowing real-time processing and customised visualisation. The platform is a high- performance, extensible and scalable data integration system with a micro-service architecture based on streaming distributed processing systems that can process large volumes of data in real-time; it’s designed to simplify the development and integration of IoT solutions. Nexus Integra was built from a distributed operating system based on data centre operating system (DC/OS) that allows for the management of multiple machines, both in the cloud and locally, from a single web interface.

Production equipment and data sources are integrated into a Nexus component, Connector, through any industrial communication protocol, where production information is processed and registered in real-time. Connector also communicates with databases or business resource systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing execution systems (MES), or customer relationship management (CRM). Nexus has the ability to operate in a local environment in a single factory or distributed across multiple sites within a company.

The platform is in continuous evolution with the development of new applications, aimed at offering a complete response to the process of Industry 4.0 digital transformation and is already implemented in more than 400 water supply systems.

Nexus Water Twin enables a digital twin – a 3D rendering of a complete installation or structure, providing a control team as well as real-time visualisation of as many process variables as required by the user with an integrated alarm system looking out for potential failure or uncommon events, providing a bird’s eye view of the entire process and a reduction on the reaction time in case of emergencies. Linkwatt minimises the costs of water distribution processes that rely on the activation and operation of powerful electrical pumps to refill water tanks that will later supply entire towns.

Linkwatt provides an exhaustive analysis of energy prices, the level of water in tanks and reservoirs, and demand predictions, using advanced analytics with algorithms and machine learning adapted to the unique characteristics of each supply.

EARS efficiently manages hydraulic performance in a water distribution network by monitoring flow, pressure and consumption values as well as managing data from different sources. EARS automatically scans this data for different types of events such as leaks, fraud or equipment failure, currently it has helped save more than 8,000 million litres which would have otherwise been lost to inefficient systems.

Glacier is a comprehensive commercial water cycle management system that enables centralised administration of customer management services in multi-company and concession environments. Glacier can be customised for the needs of each client and provides meter reading and billing, collection, debt management and asset management. In addition, it can interface with accounting and customer relationship management systems.

Tiresias is a smart metering analytics service that allows the identification and early notification of events from remote meter reading data. Tiresias processes data to automatically identify situations such as internal leakage and fraud or tampering with the household or installation meter, among others. It also provides an agile connection with different customer service systems, allowing passive notifications such as email or active notifications, such as phone calls or home visits.

BI: What is go-aigua’s domestic and international experience?

JBS: go-aigua has customers in South America, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. It is currently operating in the UK. We also have partnerships in Qatar and Angola.