As part of our special focus on water monitoring this month, we spoke to Louis Langendries (Business Developer) from intelligent water monitoring company Shayp.
Belgium-based Shayp uses machine learning and real-time data to report when water is unnecessarily wasted due to leakages or system discrepancies in private and public buildings.
Why is water monitoring important?
Leakages account for more than 20% of water consumption in buildings. As an example, the city of Brussels was losing 40% of the water consumption in their buildings and fountains before they started working with Shayp. This was mostly due to leaky toilets, faulty valves, defective water softeners and heating systems. Shayp goes beyond water monitoring as they push the limits of cloud-based computing to detect leaks thanks to their proprietary algorithm.
What are some of the contemporary challenges impeding the provision of clean water globally?
Climate change is having a significant impact on resource depletion. Water resources must also be valued and taken care of. Belgium was ranked as the 23rd country with the highest hydric stress potential alongside Morocco (World Resource Institute, 2019). Even countries such as the Netherlands encountered water-related issues in the Western part of the country due to landslides.
How could the current approaches to water monitoring be improved?
Water usage per capita could be reduced in different parts of the world, but water waste should be reduced everywhere. Both in distribution networks and in buildings. We have the tools but we still need to educate a big part of the population about that problem.
How can emerging smart technologies like AI, IoT, and big data help?
We’re seeing a major impact on reducing customer side leakages (leakages in buildings) with the deployment of Shayp IoT & machine learning. Water losses in buildings are reduced by 65% in the first weeks and gradually by 90% after a few months as organizations start repairing smaller leakages also. A mass deployment of our algorithm is enough to avoid utilities finding alternative water resources in order to compensate for increasing demand and greater scarcity.
What is your organisation doing?
At Shayp, we use machine learning and real-time data to report when water is unnecessarily wasted due to leakages or system discrepancies in buildings. Our customers include cities and municipalities as well as private companies and people who manage multiple buildings and can benefit from being able to prioritize maintenance interventions. We also recently
started working with water utility companies such as the largest one in Belgium which resells our technology under the name “easyCONSO”.
What are your hopes for the future?
Our main objective for the future is to decrease water losses in buildings from 21.8% to less than 1% on average by allowing every building user to be alerted in case of leakage. So far, we have been able to detect more than 15.000 leaks with average savings of 21.8% and a total of above 1.1 billion liters saved (the equivalent of 400 Olympic-sized pools). We are currently
active in Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and expanding throughout Europe.
More info about Shayp? www.shayp.com; info@shayp.com
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