Case
Future City Water
Digitization of the water supply chain
Goal
A smart system for quality-assured water supply

Future City Water is an innovation project that aims to increase the pace of development of a smart network for drinking water supply – from water source to tap. Today, there is a need for municipal water and sewerage companies to gain control over the supply of drinking water and quickly obtain information about leaks, operational disruptions and water quality.
Overview
The loss of drinking water in Sweden alone is estimated to be around 20 percent, a major financial burden to communities. Leaks are both difficult and expensive to repair, and this leads to a delay in investments in new infrastructure. With the help of Future City Water’s tools, the entire water supply chain is digitized and hence gives a better overview of the system.
The water supply and sewage industry is facing major changes with digitalisation
The water supply and sewage industry is facing major changes as digitalisation now seriously influences the industry. Future City Water (FCW) focuses on our most important life ingredient, the drinking water.
We develop an IoT platform and decision support systems for sorting and utilizing brand new and extensive data sets. We work with the development of tomorrow’s business models, organization and cross-sectoral innovation
Mikael Rönde, Partner in Glaze
In the future, we will have access to a smart drinking water supply network from source to end customer with safe and efficient delivery of high quality drinking water. System-wide planning is done on the basis of data-driven decision. The network is automatically controlled for optimization of resources, and minimization of leakage. End users and citizens can actively influence the delivery and cost of their water consumption. The drinking water management network is fully integrated into the smart city and enables the development of brand new services for infrastructure owners and end users from all parts of the system via both historical data and smart sensors at the customer as well as drone technology in the water supply.
We develop an IoT platform and decision support systems for sorting and utilizing brand new and extensive data sets. We work with the development of tomorrow’s business models, organization and cross-sectoral innovation, which also means that we look at how the energy and water sector together can achieve synergies in the smart city.
We include property owners and end users in the development of tomorrow’s smart drinking water network, modeling tools and innovation management.
Future City Water helps with
-Collection and processing of large amounts of data for optimized operation and long-term planning.
-Finding leaks, sending of information to customers and making the water utility system more energy-efficient and capable of identifying quality problems.
-Integration of the digitized water supply chain into a smart city.
How does it work?
The project has a strong focus on data collection and the associated processing of large amounts of data as well as simulation of scenarios. Beacon Tower is responsible for the central data collection with integration to source systems, visualization and normalization of real-time data and integration to simulation and monitoring tools. The results and simulations are used to optimize the supply chain.
Who is it for?
Municipal water and sewerage companies can use Future City Water’s tools in order to gain control of the entire water supply chain and quickly identify disruptions.
Budget
The total project budget is SEK 21 million, of which approx. SEK 10 million comes from Vinnova.
Beacon Tower
Beacon Tower is the central data collection entity where data is collected from many different systems and where data are consumed by other systems. The goal is to give access to a digitized drinking water supply network from source to end customer with safe and efficient delivery of high-quality drinking water. System-wide planning can be achieved when the network is fully integrated in the smart city.
Read more about the project here.