Turning Smart Water Meter Data Into Useful Information : A case study on rental apartments in Södertälje

Managing water in urban areas is an ever increasingly complex challenge. Technology enables sustainable urban water management and with integrated smart metering solutions, massive amounts of water consumption data from the end users can be collected. However, the possibility of generating data from the end user holds no value in itself. It is with the use of data analysis the vast amount of the collected data can provide more insightful information creating potential benefits. It is recognized that a deeper understanding of the end user could potentially provide benefits for operational managers as well as for the end users. A single case study of a data set containing high frequency end user water consumption data from rental apartments has been conducted, where the data set was analyzed in order to see what possible information that could be extracted and interpreted based on an exploratory data analysis (EDA). Furthermore, an interview with the operational manager of the buildings under study as well as a literature review have been carried out in order to understand how the gathered data is used today and to which contexts it could be extrapolated to provide potential benefits at a building level. The results suggests that the EDA is a powerful method approach when starting out without strong preconception of the data under study and have successfully revealed patterns and a fundamental understanding of the data and its structure. Through analysis, variations over time, water consumption patterns and excessive water users have been identified as well as a leak identification process. Even more challenging than to make meaning of the data is to trigger actions, decisions and measures based on the data analysis. The unveiled information could be applied for an improved operational building management, to empower the customers, for business and campaign opportunities as well as for an integrated decision support system. To summarize, it is concluded that the usage of smart water metering data holds an untapped opportunity to save water, energy as well as money. In the drive towards a more sustainable and smarter city, smart water meter data from end users have the potential to enable smarter building management as well as smarter water services