Fireside chat between Barwon Water, IWN and Iota
Watch this short sound bite from the fireside chat between Travis Juffermans, Smart Networks Section Leader at Barwon Water and David Mason GAICD, Customer Director
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Who we are
Iota is a genuine partner to the global water industry.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of South East Water, a water authority in the growth corridor in the South East of Melbourne, we understand all too well the challenges facing water utilities, councils and municipalities globally. In particular, we understand the unique challenges associated with trialling and adopting new technologies and innovation in the water sector. The water sector must innovate, while not compromising its role as an essential service provider.
Innovation in the water industry is challenging and authorities often have to accept and adapt products and technology developed for other industries. Iota believes there is an opportunity for water authorities to play a leadership role in water’s innovation ecosystem by trialling innovations and working with partners, to ensure new technologies are fit-for-water.
Iota is not designed to become a vendor of technology and seeks to transfer its technology and products to industry for local and global impact.
Inception
Australia’s ‘Millennium drought’ is recognised as the worst on record and in response, South East Water developed and deployed innovative solutions that weren’t available in the market to help it and its customers and community adapt to a water-stressed environment. Other authorities increasingly wanted access to these solutions and so the Victorian government granted South East Water special rights to create a wholly owned commercial subsidiary that could license technology, operate in the non-regulated commercial space and ultimately have a global impact.
Iota is a for-profit entity that is self-funded with profits reinvested back into Iota or paid back to South East Water as a dividend.
Our business model
Iota has a portfolio of various technologies that it is actively incubating, productising and commercialising for the global water sector.
Most of the technology is sourced from South East Water as it undertakes its own research and development activities and goes through its digital utility transformation.
But Iota is also commercialising intellectual property from other sources such as universities and is open to any game-changing innovation with potential for material global impact.
South East Water has a proud legacy as an innovator in the global water industry and so is an ideal place to prove the feasibility, viability and desirability of innovation. Hence regardless of where the technology comes from, it must be ‘proven at South East Water’ before Iota will commercialise.
Some technology can be licensed to industry relatively early in its journey while others need to be converted into products, with Iota selling directly to early-adopter customers and through partners.
Ultimately Iota builds value in the technology with a view to transfer to industry at the optimal time in order to accelerate its uptake and return value to its owner, South East Water.
Meet the team behind the vision
A diverse and deeply experienced group of former consultants, entrepreneurs and enterprise leaders with global experience from some of the world’s most forward-thinking organisations. The proud diversity of our team supports innovative thinking, agility and ingenuity that we share with our customers and partners.
Watch this short sound bite from the fireside chat between Travis Juffermans, Smart Networks Section Leader at Barwon Water and David Mason GAICD, Customer Director
Water utilities ensure that all customers, residential and commercial, have access to clean drinking water. Many utilities in Australia are looking to the future through
A conversation with RMIT, South East Water and Iota on their journey to scale up the technology and considerations for water authorities looking at the
Iota proudly acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live, and pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge their songlines, cultural lore and continuing connection to the land and water. We recognise and value the rich cultural heritage and ongoing contributions of Aboriginal people and communities to our society across Australia.
Sustainability
| Water Utility Challenges | Digital Utility Levers | Lentic® Enablers |
| Water scarcity from climate change and population growth | Reduce water wastage by identifying network leaks | Enable an integrated ecosystem that leverages machine intelligence |
| Meet and exceed environmental regulatory requirements | Increase digital monitoring of water value chain to improve water quality and reduce environmental impact | Enhance data quality and quantity to support regulatory reporting and transparency |
Customers
| Water Utility Challenges | Digital Utility Levers | Lentic® Enablers |
| Rising customer expectations | Provide customers with relevant on-demand insights through preferred channels, enabling better service experiences | Built-in domain knowledge delivers on-demand customisable insights to customers |
| Affordability | Reduce water services costs through innovative demand management and enhanced operational efficiency | Support automation of key business processes to enhance customer service delivery and reduce demand |
Assets
| Water Utility Challenges | Digital Utility Levers | Lentic® Enablers |
| Optimise asset life and reduce operating costs | Visualise performance and manage asset lifecycle in real time while reducing the need to fund additional infrastructure | Domain rules applied to predict unknown disruption across assets, by providing high volume of data |
| Reduce non-revenue water losses | Automate identification of network leaks to enable rapid and cost-effective fault resolution | Enable integration of field device data across enterprise systems to manage utility response to network leaks and faults |
| Protect asset security | Provide a safe and resilient operating environment reducing cyber risks to critical infrastructure | Security policy and controls are in place to support continuous monitoring efforts in line with ISO0227001 |
