Up to 50% of water is lost or wasted. The solution is technological

The solution to water scarcity is mainly to recover the rainfall regime with the reversal, until now unsuccessful, of climate change; reduce consumption, something that the forecasts do not contemplate; and optimize the management of uses to prevent the loss of between 20% and 50% of existing resources. On the last front, technology is a fundamental tool. Researchers from all areas develop solutions to avoid wasting a good without which life is impossible.

Carmen Flores Cayuela is a researcher in the Hydraulics and Irrigation group at the University of Córdoba and is part of Tic4bioa digital platform financed with European funds and the Regional Government of Andalusia to optimize the use of water and improve biodiversity in the countryside, which consumes 80% of water resources. Any percentage of improvement in this area is essential due to its extraordinary weight in global consumption. “You can save up to 20% and, in addition, you gain efficiency because 100% of what is used is used,” says the researcher at the Sevillian farm. Cortijo El Puertowhere they have installed their sensor network.

This network of receptors at different depths acts as nerve endings in the earth’s epidermis. One has been installed for every 10 hectares (24 in total) and its cost per unit is around 1,000 euros. “They tell us the availability of water, the humidity and the irrigation recommendation,” explains Flores while showing the mobile application, developed by Dacartec, where the results of the collected data are reflected. Furthermore, based on information uploaded manually and with the help of an image search engine, he calculates the basic biodiversity indices to predict pests and combat them in an ecological way.

Industry is the next major consumer of water. Enrique de la Torre Liébana is CEO of Ingeoliva, the family business that owns the farm and produces organic oil. Its sized oil mill reproduces the scheme applied in the field: one sensor for each critical process. They monitor the flow rate per second used for washing the fruit, for treating the juice and for cleaning all the facilities. He has been working on the project for two years, in which the Spanish professional association of organic production participates. Ecovaliain order to determine the water footprint, the volume necessary to produce.

“The objective is not only to know the resource necessary for each process but also to identify the points of improvement to reach the minimum possible,” explains De la Torre, who assures that the investment is worth it. “It is not a question of profitability but of personal satisfaction, of commitment to the environment. That is priceless,” he says after acknowledging that the yield in this type of farm is lower than in intensive ones. “This has an impact on the price, but the consumer, if educated, is willing to pay a little more,” he says. The water savings they hope to achieve is 50%.

Luis Babiano, manager of the association of public water operators Aeopas, defends the importance of all fronts, especially in Spain, “where the available resources are insufficient and those that do exist have been exploited to the point of exhaustion.” “Prioritizing its effective management is essential,” he adds.

In this game where the triumph is water, the third major consumer is included: the urban center. “In some of our large cities, more than 20% of the water distributed by the network is lost due to leaks, and in some rural areas it reaches 50%,” says Babiano. “It is also not acceptable that, on the coast, where tourist activity accelerates demand, not all the purified water is reused,” he adds as an example of applying technology in water management.

Babiano defends the digitalization of distribution processes. “It is paradoxical that with existing technology we do not have complete information about the water cycle, losses due to leaks, breakages or leaks or that the consumer does not know what they spend daily,” he comments.

Ramón Gonzáles Carvajal is a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Seville and has participated in the preparation of the Guide for the digitalization of water uses, a free resource promoted by Aeopas and Research Award from the Economic and Social Council of Andalusia.

He assures that in urban supply it is known “more or less” where the water is lost, although he admits that the situation is uneven: “There are many municipalities that do not know where the pipes are, that have never drawn up a map of them and do not know the age of the network. “The problem,” he adds, “is that fixing it is very difficult because it involves a gigantic investment. The theory says that 2% of the networks should be renewed per year.”

In the countryside, where most is spent, the situation worsens. “Some irrigation pipes can have all the losses and it is not known why no one bills you for the water that is discharged. We know what is captured, but we do not know what is lost because there is no measuring instrument. Although there are tremendously technical irrigation communities, they are not the majority,” explains the engineer.

Other uses

Technology is not only a way to save money for operators and users, who can follow daily consumption and detect network failures or distinguish between leaks and fraud. It can also serve as a predictive demand indicator to make decisions or promote savings campaigns and even be a lifesaver. There are already, as González Carvajal explains, multispectral cameras that process the spectrum of light in water and serve to predict when the supply will become unsuitable for consumption. And they can also serve so that social services can monitor, with their consent, vulnerable groups.

The meters have, for a cost of about 150 euros, sufficient technology to guarantee a useful life of 12 years with the provision of real-time information on the entire water cycle. The monthly cost would be just over one euro. The Guide to digitization facilitates the choice, purchase and management of this technology and the data it provides.

For large companies, the investment is profitable. At the Seville supply company Emasesa It has come to record only technical losses, those that are inevitable in a network that supplies a million users. However, for small municipalities, it is a challenge that would imply increases in unpopular rates or the concession of the service, but not even private companies want to take it on due to insufficient or no expectation of profit. “The only way for this new wave of modernization to reach these municipalities is to offer incentives and for them to be united on a sufficient scale so that they can have technologists and technicians who manage the network in a decentralized manner,” explains the professor at the School of Seville Engineering.

“Water is a precious commodity and the only way to manage it better is to have more information. If we have water for four years and we manage to save 20% with digitalization, in the end we will have water for 5 years,” González Carvajal summarizes.

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