Could smart tech be the solution for SA’s water infrastructure woes?

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JEREMY MAGGS: Now, South Africa’s water crisis has become as critical as load shedding, with President Ramaphosa calling it an urgent priority for this year. Water shortages are not just an economic risk, but also a major threat to daily life. With aging infrastructure, rising demand and climate pressure, the country faces increasing water insecurity.

But here’s the question, could smart technology be the missing link? Some experts believe digital tools, data analytics, and AI-driven monitoring could reduce wastage, improve efficiency and optimise water management.

I want to explore that in a little more detail today. Dr Andrew Dickson is with us, engineering executive at CBI-electric: low voltage. Andrew, a very warm welcome and thank you very much for talking to me today. The president says water security is as critical as load shedding. In your opinion, how bad is the situation?

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ANDREW DICKSON: Jeremy, thank you for having me. In my opinion, it is a big worry. It is a very big concern and, unlike electricity where we’ve been able to weather the storm, water infrastructure and purification becomes a big, big problem.

Particularly in the likes of places like Joburg and Gauteng, where we know we have no natural supply, we are highly dependent on infrastructure.

JEREMY MAGGS: What, in your opinion, is the biggest driver behind this crisis?

ANDREW DICKSON: I think time, people and management. So all of those have contributed to increased requirements. Slowly as the infrastructures has had to grow, as it’s had to support more and more usage, that infrastructure maintenance hasn’t necessarily been maintained. So, as a result, we land up increasing our losses over time and those losses are, I’m afraid to say, at this point in time, out of control.

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JEREMY MAGGS: So there is a solution as far as you’re concerned, and that’s smart technology. What are we talking about and how might it improve water security?

ANDREW DICKSON: So for me, and if you look at what the experts are saying out there in the real world, our biggest problem is we don’t actually know the real details. We don’t have visibility. We perceive an idea of where we are seeing the losses, how much we are actually losing, but actually no one really, really knows that number.

So smart technology enables two things. One is it provides us a means of getting information or data and that data then becomes useful when we start to analyse it and use it in models to predict where, when and how things might happen.

JEREMY MAGGS: So practically how might this work?

ANDREW DICKSON: So let’s start at the top and what most people do is start with the basic monitoring. So this is monitoring on a municipal level and it’s monitoring at a consumer level because again, it’s a system.

We put water in at the top, we take water out at the bottom. Now these two should match, and if they don’t match, then we need to know where those discrepancies are.

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So smart metering is where we start and that is the ability to pick up the high-level information and be able to disseminate that down. The next level then starts to look at leak detection, because obviously we all know, we drive the city streets, we see water leaking out of everywhere and that leak detection becomes obviously a very big revenue loss for a municipality.

Therefore, we need to be able to create more water in order to be able to consume water lower down.

If we could proactively close off those leaks as they start, not months, days, years later, then we start to be able to rectify the system, which means we start to actually collect money for the water that we’re moving through the system, and then we can stabilise the network.

JEREMY MAGGS: I guess the question would be then, would solutions like this be, one, affordable and secondly, scalable? Particularly in some municipal areas which are vastly underfunded.

ANDREW DICKSON: I don’t think we have a funding choice. So by the mere losses of revenue that we simply cannot recoup because of leaks, the cost of the infrastructure spend would probably be offset against the losses on the leaks just in the short term.

By doing that, obviously then your revenue base becomes a more committed value, which means we then know how much we actually can spend on maintenance and infrastructure.

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There have been many test pilot cases around the world where in fact they’ve seen a significant drop in maintenance costs. Here primarily we’re talking man on the street, feet on the ground doing maintenance work.

If we can predict and ensure that those leaks are detected early, then those leaks don’t become massive problems and, therefore, take more time, cost more money. So it’s the ability to identify those early, which is what this technology will enable.

JEREMY MAGGS: So Andrew, if smart tech then is the answer, and you make a very compelling case, I guess I’ve got to ask the question, what’s stopping us from implementing it at scale, given the seriousness of the crisis?

ANDREW DICKSON: I think it’s exposure. Again, energy was the easy one. Energy is where everyone’s been for a very long time. Water is still something that is relatively new. Though there are companies out there that have very good solutions. They do come at a cost, not everyone knows how to implement it, and you need to be able to roll it out en masse.

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As you said earlier, that is a high cost, but that input cost ultimately in the months to years post that will give you a good return on investment and allow us to ensure water security and safety.

That to me, I think is something which is what Cyril Ramaphosa is focusing on and saying we cannot actually afford to go down that road, though I think we are a long way down that road. If we don’t start now, we’re going to be in serious, serious trouble.

JEREMY MAGGS: Given that we’ve acknowledged over 300 days of no load shedding, the reality is we still do have an energy crisis in South Africa. Things are very fragile. So there is a causal link surely between the energy crisis and the water crisis. It would be difficult, surely, for the tech solutions that you’re proposing to work under these risky conditions.

Read: Power crisis triggers water cuts in Johannesburg

ANDREW DICKSON: Yes and no. The tech obviously requires energy because it runs off some sort of power source. However, if we can just start on the base levels where we’ve got protection through infrastructure buildings that are enclosed and so on, generally there is some sort of backup available because obviously pump stations have to remain active in order to get water through the network. It is a problem.

We need to identify those risks, understand how to mitigate those risks, but we need to be doing something. To wait and to see what might happen, again as a city, as a whole, as people we can manage without the electricity component in our lives, but we cannot manage without clean water in our lives, and that I think is the critical focus area.

JEREMY MAGGS: Dr Andrew Dickson, thank you very much indeed.

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