Smarteo Water’s City Flow: Extending the Life of Water Networks

Paris, January 18, 2018 – Smarteo Water, a specialist in the digitalization of water networks, announced the launch of City Flow. Based on the Opendatasoft platform, the service allows detailed monitoring of the state of the infrastructure and the quality of the water, using data collected from interactive meters.

Thanks to City Flow, Smarteo Water aims to offer an immediate and targeted response to the problem of aging infrastructure affecting territories across France. Many other countries in Europe and North America could also benefit from this service, as many pipes were installed just after World War II.

In France during the 100th French Mayors’ Congress in November 2017, President Macron took the the opportunity to issue a warning on the aging water networks, bearing in mind the difficulty territories face in investing in their renewal. Calling for work to begin immediately in 2018, the President clearly supported the need to involve the government in thinking about future funding required to renew the pipelines.

But communities also have a part to play, from today onward, to extend the life of pipelines. They can use them as tactfully as possible before they are fully replaced in the longer term. Pipelines can last for up to 75 years but are currently only changed every 150 years in France. Networks are therefore very old and it is essential for territories to prioritize pipes in need of replacement in order to avoid any health risks and to curb waste.

A possibility for immediate action is intelligently using and cross-linking the data produced by connected objects. This is the way forward for the City Flow software, backed up to the management and data sharing platform operated by Opendatasoft.

The tool functions as a hub, centralizing all the data (pressure indicators, flow, temperature, etc.) collected by various meters and sensors installed on the pipes by the Smarteo Water teams. The data is cross-linked with open data, then analyzed using algorithms developed by Smarteo Water. It is then published on dashboards aggregating several types of visualizations (digital indicators, tables, graphs, maps, etc.).

It is important to note that the information is stored on servers in France, through a sovereign cloud service complying with the new European regulation no. 2016/679 entitled “General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)”, applicable as of May 25, 2018.

The mass of the raw data generated by the connected meters and sensors thus becomes fully usable by the territories’ agents, as City Flow allows them to control the state of the network and instantly detect certain anomalies (leaks, overflow, ice, etc.). The software aims to be the decision-making assistance tool for the asset management of the water networks.

“There is an average water-volume loss of 25% flowing between the water tower and a home, due to leaks in the pipelines. A service such as City Flow aims to cut this percentage in half, in particular by signaling repeated leaks affecting specific pipes. By allowing the mapping of pipes to identify critical pipes in real time, City Flow decisively targets them for short-term renewal and the extension of the overall lifespan of the network.” Loïc Charron, Smarteo Water CEO

This immediate and precise management of problems with a view to network sustainability is fully in line with a Smart City approach. Water is, of course, concerned. As is energy, transport and urban planning. In order to interconnect these elements, administrations need tools in addition to a strategic vision. The Opendatasoft platform is now registered as a nucleus which can be entirely managed by the community and around which different service providers will gravitate based on the data, like Smarteo Water and its City Flow software.

“A product like the one developed by Opendatasoft is located at the heart of the smart city’s information systems. It offers the foundations on which vertical players can work and propose their services independently of each other, in total simplicity.” Loïc Charron, Smarteo Water CEO