Announcing Aqueduct: Using Machine Learning to Strengthen Water Infrastructure
Fresh water is our most precious resource on Planet Earth. This is an indisputable fact; life cannot exist without it. A society without a…
Category: Water
Author: Jeff Pawlak

Announcing Aqueduct: Using Machine Learning to Strengthen Water Infrastructure

Fresh water is our most precious resource on Planet Earth. This is an indisputable fact; life cannot exist without it. A society without a steady stream of clean and accessible freshwater is no society at all — it is an apocalyptic wasteland.
Considering the gravity of importance of fresh water, it is wildly unnerving that our country is so bad at managing it. Public water systems regularly lose between 10% and 30% of treated water to non-revenue leaks — that is, clean water uselessly leaking out pipelines due to breaks and leaks. Data suggests that nationwide, utilities lose more water to these leaks than all of the water used by domestic households in the United States, as much as two trillion gallons a year. Non-revenue water is a loss for everyone —lower revenue for the water utilities, less water for society.¹
This is an absurdity, especially in the context of the painful droughts and water rationing in the Western States. There are farmers in central California advocating to drain rivers to extract more water (subsequently killing off sensitive wildlife)², and yet a significant percentage of our water is simply exiting out of the system.
Already, this trend should sound the alarm. But it gets worse — a lot worse. First, global warming is here, it is real, and it is affecting our society in debilitating ways. Because global warming has a dramatic effect on weather patterns, we can expect to see more severe droughts in arid areas over the coming years, leading to water scarcity and desertification.³
Municipalities and metropolises all over the world are already struggling with the basic question of whether they have enough water for their citizens. In many places, water scarcity is already here; see Cape Town’s Day Zero⁴; see the Syrian Civil War, where water scarcity played a direct roll in plunging the country into chaos⁵; see water shortages in cities like Mexico City, Cairo, Sao Paulo, and of all places — London.⁶
And if the volatility from global warming wasn’t enough, back at home the United States is dealing with a massive water infrastructure crisis, where water assets all over the country are nearing the end of their lifetime. Our country will need to invest at least $1 trillion over the coming years to upgrade legacy systems and invest in new plants to meet population growth.⁷
And if you’re as skeptical of our Federal Government as I am, you probably agree that there is neither the political will nor the foresight to invest that enormous sum of money in our future, however necessary it might be. Absent of some kind of 21st Century FDR-style New Deal program, we may be out luck.
And so, as a nation we face a horrific equation where older infrastructure continues to deteriorate, while getting increasingly strained by volatile weather patterns and resource demand. It’s not a fun thing to think about.
And yet, perhaps this infrastructure crisis is a call to action. Perhaps this is time to innovate, to do more with less, and engineer our way out of a disaster.
Israel’s Water Miracle
My co-founder Ethan Durham and I stumbled upon the water problem recently, and realized that there was something we could do about it. Ever since I moved to Silicon Valley in 2015, I’ve been frustrated by the in-group nature of the technology community, and the lack of collaboration with more old school industries or organizations outside of tech. For every social impact startup, it seems, there are ten photo-sharing apps, wannabee social media platforms, or enterprise software add-ons. Sure, there is room for those companies too, but it seems like Silicon Valley is obsessed over creating the next Facebook, producing a myopia that blinds it to the problems in the world that we actually need to solve.
California is the world’s leader in tech, and yet we still haven’t figured out how to solve our basic water issues in our own state. This is particularly frustrating for me — I studied abroad in Israel in 2011, a country historically plagued by water issues. Israel’s drought got so bad at one point that that Sea of Galilee’s water levels dropped to historically low levels⁸ and local celebrities appeared on television to plead people to use less water. Then, within the span of a few years, Israel used desalinization technology* to entirely eliminate water scarcity. The small nation now has more than enough water for its population, industry, and agriculture.⁹
Even before it solved its water issues, Israel has consistently pioneered solutions that reduced agricultural use of water (drip irrigation), water recycling, better leak detection and more.
If Israel can solve its water issues, why can’t California?
My theory is that we can — we have more than enough engineers to go around, but there haven’t been enough entrepreneurs to step up and make it a reality. Time to change that.
Enter Aqueduct
Last month, Ethan and I launched Aqueduct. Aqueduct is a machine learning startup using predictive analytics to help water utilities operate more efficiently and save resources.
Based on our research, we realized that while water utilities around the country faced budgetary crises and volatile weather patterns, they weren’t taking advantage of the one resource that they had plenty of: data. It turns out that the majority of water utilities are collecting enormous amounts of data about the operations of their facility, and simply letting it sit. No analysis, no mining, no predictive algorithms, no nothing.
Herein lies the opportunity: water infrastructure is leaking, eroding, and perhaps even rusting away, and data can tell us where that is happening in a plant. Machine learning can pinpoint that likelihood that a water main is going to break within the next year, or whether the water pressure is too high in a pipe, or whether a holding reservoir is being operated correctly. Advanced algorithms can identify anomalies, predict future outcomes, determine optimal plant settings and far more.
These are the kind of insights that can drastically improve plant performance and save money. After all, asset breakdown is an incredibly expensive incident, and facilities can spend millions of dollars fixing systems that break down without notice. Predictive analytics can reduce or eliminate those kinds of surprises. Furthermore, data insights can defer investments that don’t need to happen — in other words, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
There are 50,000 water utilities in the United States, a largely fragmented market compared to more centralized municipal water providers in Europe (the volume is misleading — the distribution skews towards the long tail, as there are thousands of water providers in the United States serving less than twenty five households).¹⁰ Only a slim minority of these utilities have implemented any kind of analytics solutions, even as many sit on large amounts of data. We are working to provide a seamless solution for utilities that benefits their efficiency without interrupting their ability to operate.
To better understand the problem and the market opportunity that we are working on, I’d recommend that you start with this article.
At the core, Aqueduct is about providing intelligence to water utilities that allow them to do more with less, and improving infrastructure resiliency in an increasingly volatile environment. Aqueduct is about strengthening the physical foundation of communities, and creating a better world.
To be clear, the water problem is a gargantuan issue. It will be solved by an ecosystem of private-public partnerships, smart regulators, entrepreneurs, policy advocates, environmental activists, and more. There is only so much that any one organization can do. But we truly believe that we can make a difference, and we are taking the leap forward.
The Road Ahead
We launched the company over the last month and half. Ethan designed a beautiful website to reflect our company mission, and I wrote a ten page white paper highlighting the problem (which you can download on the site if you’d like to learn more about this topic).
In June, we started working on our first pilot with Fairfield-Suisan Sewer District, a wastewater treatment facility in the North Bay. Though our initial scope was to focus on distribution of clean water, we’ve expanded our scope to work on any large scale water infrastructure facility, as there are core similarities in function and purpose. We are helping this Fairfield-Suisan analyze their historical data of large pumps and wet wells, as well as reduce their energy consumption (did you know? Water infrastructure accounts for 3% of the electricity in the United States and 35% of municipal consumption¹¹).
This is not going to be an easy journey — we’re fully aware of the technology, regulatory, and sales challenges that lie ahead. But we’re excited like never before, because this is something that the world needs, and we look forward to making a difference in communities in the United States.
If you have any thoughts, feedback, or wisdom, I would love to hear from you. Furthermore, if you know someone in water tech who might be interested in what we are doing, please don’t hesitate to connect them to me.
Send me an email at Jeff@Aqueduct.ai.
*There is no shortage of controversy around desalinization technology, a process that turns salt water into fresh water. Opponents charge that it is energy intensive and expensive. I understand the opposition but I believe we’ve arrived at a point where we are going to have to include desalinization as a method of water sourcing. The consequences of water scarcity — both socially and environmentally — are enormous. It’s better to have a high energy bill to pull water out of the ocean than to dry up our wells and rivers.
Citations:
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1173&context=mae_facpub
https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article162696018.html
https://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-effects/drought.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/09/africa/cape-town-day-zero-crisis-intl/index.html
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-42982959
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking-water/
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=22403
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/
https://www.smartresilient.com/using-machine-learning-assess-infrastructure-replacement-needs
https://www.mge.com/saving-energy/business/bea/article_detail.htm?nid=2431