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Across the globe water scarcity, poor water quality and inadequate sanitation negatively impact human security. How does IMQS’s water and sewer management software help municipalities overcome water and wastewater management challenges?
WATER AND WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
Water sustains all aspects of life on earth. It supports healthy ecosystems and, for humankind, is fundamental for economic development.
Clean, accessible water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in. However, across the globe water scarcity, poor water quality and inadequate sanitation negatively impact food security, livelihood choices and educational opportunities for poor families.
According to the United Nations, by 2050, at least one in four people is likely to live in a country affected by chronic or recurring shortages of fresh water:
At least 1.8 billion people globally use a source of drinking water that is fecally contaminated.
Water scarcity affects more than 40 per cent of the global population and is projected to rise.
Over 1.7 billion people are currently living in river basins where water use exceeds recharge.
2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation services, such as toilets or latrines.
More than 80 per cent of wastewater resulting from human activities is discharged into rivers or the sea without any pollution removal.
Each day, nearly 1,000 children die due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrhoeal diseases.
As a result of these critical facts, “Access to Safely Managed Water and Sanitation Services” was incorporated as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030.
To achieve this goal requires investing money and time into the development, maintenance and management of water and wastewater infrastructure systems at the municipal level. The collapse of the Emfuleni Municipality, especially with regard to water resource and wastewater management, is a stark example of the challenges both governments and populations face when services implode due to poor infrastructure and financial management.
On the level of infrastructure management, IMQS offers a comprehensive technological solution that not only helps municipalities manage their reticulation systems but also facilitates avoiding unnecessary expenditure while ensuring transparency and accountability.
THE IMQS WATER AND WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
IMQS offers an integrated set of web-based applications that overcome key challenges in water and sewer reticulation management:
Water Infrastructure Management Module
Sewer Infrastructure Management Module
Water Demand Management Module
The above modules integrate with specialist hydraulic software to offer a geographically linked, infrastructure-lifecycle-focused representation of a municipality’s water and sewer reticulation networks.
WATER AND SEWER INFRASTRUCTURE
Both the IMQS Water and Sewer Infrastructure Modules curate information on a user-friendly web-interface that offers real geographic insight into a city’s hydraulic and wastewater systems.
When using the IMQS system, engineers and technicians acquire quick and easy access to infrastructure-asset information, including performance, utilisation, criticality and replacement value, as well as important technical information such as pipe connectivity, length, material and diameter. In this way, municipalities are empowered to better plan, develop and manage their water systems and achieve greater levels of service to their clients.
WATER DEMAND MANAGEMENT
The IMQS Water Demand Management Module leverages important engineering and treasury data to offer a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of municipal water infrastructure use, demand and supply.
Specialist engineering software from companies such as South Africa’s GLS Consulting facilitates the establishment of optimised hydraulic models and master plans of water distribution and sewer reticulation systems. To construct an accurate representation of water balance, engineering software systems link models and billing data, as well as data from bulk water meters. Calculations are done on a citywide and zone basis. The geographic models and dynamic master plans make available the data necessary to inform water conservation and demand management interventions, as well as future planning and maintenance.
This data is then fed to IMQS, where it is centralised and geographically presented for users to acquire information that informs strategic and financial planning.
With IMQS, users can better identify outliers, or potentially malfunctioning assets, such as:
Faulty meters
Administrative errors
Large water consumers
Irregular spikes or dips in consumption
Zone Leakage Indexes
Strategic reporting, such as non-revenue, unaccounted-for water, is performed on a zone basis. Results of related analyses are then directly transferred into IMQS. Account-level reporting is facilitated by the integration of treasury data sets within IMQS. The history of actions, such as water shortages or workflow summons, are shown either for individual consumers or on a ward-level. Actions or workflows are compared to payment responses in order to collect outstanding debt in the most cost-effective manner. With the right information users are able to conduct analyses that inform comprehensive operating scenarios.
The IMQS WDM Module is a comprehensive solution to achieving greater success in water demand management. It integrates and centralises engineering and financial data for better decision-making and planning across all municipal departments involved.
COMPREHENSIVE RETICULATION INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
IMQS’s integrated software packages help to solve a variety of water resource and wastewater management problems by equipping the right people with the right information at the right time to inform strategic operational and financial planning.
Practical information is presented in a number of categories on a geographically linked user interface accessible on both desktop and mobile devices. In this way, IMQS helps its users to better identify risks and opportunities and therefore make better decisions regarding the daily and future management of municipal water and wastewater reticulation systems.
