The explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) is often likened to a tidal wave just starting to make landfall, impacting almost all aspects of daily life. While the scope and scale of AI’s impact is yet to be fully grasped, the water aspect of the tidal-wave analogy generates interesting and practical possibilities in the minds of infrastructure professionals. AI is already helping address a host of challenges related to sustainability, workforce shortages, and overall efficiency, and the trend is likely to gain more traction in the days ahead.
With water a precious and finite commodity, industry professionals have long been seeking ways to use water more effectively and make safe drinking water more widely available. This pursuit has required detailed analyses, creative design solutions, and new types of collaboration among various stakeholders. AI is helping on all of these fronts.
Image Source @_greta/stock.adobe.com.
Analytical Help On the Way
The burgeoning amount of data available to engineers and other infrastructure professionals often results in tedious analyses, requiring numerous hours of human resources. Much of the work in analyzing detailed mapping, imagery, and IoT sensor data can be expedited with AI, freeing up professionals to do more creative thinking.
“AI can be leveraged to clean data, remove spikes, and detect anomalies,” noted Rodrigo Fernandes, director of ES(D)G — Empowering Sustainable Development Goals — at Bentley Systems. He cited leak detection in municipal water systems as a prime example of how AI can help manage and interpret massive amounts of data.
A Brazilian water management company, SABESP, has used AI in its efforts to provide reliable access to clean water in São Paulo. Supplying services to more than 20-million people, SABESP initiated a project to integrate water supply, sewage, and sanitation data in a single digital environment. Known as Integra 4.0, the program combines business intelligence with AI for proactive network monitoring and maintenance to identify and resolve system issues.
SABESP leveraged Bentley OpenFlows applications to model hydraulic systems and monitor leaks and wasted resources, resulting in a 29% reduction in water losses. The results helped SABESP win the award in the Water & Wastewater category at Bentley Systems’ 2024 Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards, held in Vancouver, Canada, October 8–9.
SABESP used AI in conjunction with Bentley OpenFlows applications to model hydraulic networks and manage system maintenance in São Paulo, Brazil, reducing water losses by 29%. Image source: Bentley Systems. Click image to enlarge.
AI technology has also been useful in inspecting and monitoring facilities such as dams and bridges. Used in conjunction with computer-vision technology, AI can help interpret data to detect cracks and other flaws in critical structures. “We've seen users apply AI to better inspect dams and make informed decisions, which can help to extend the useful life of the assets they are managing,” said Gregg Herrin, Vice President of Water Infrastructure at Bentley Systems.
AI-Aided Design
In design settings, AI can help water and environmental professionals design more efficiently and consider multiple options faster, noted Herrin. “For water and wastewater treatment plants, we've seen AI used to reduce time and budget for site design and construction.”
Bentley’s new OpenSite+ can also aid designers by automating site layout and drawing production. Employing generative AI tools, OpenSite+ enables designers to create, revise, and interact with 3D site models through natural language statements and evaluate multiple layout options, optimizing site grading, stormwater management, and other project features.
Carbon analysis, an increasingly important aspect of sustainable design, is also being aided by AI. Because carbon analysis requires detailed grouping of data by material and location, along with assignment of materials to specific design components, designers often face a large amount of tedious work. AI can automate much of this work, according to Fernandes. “Generative AI large language models (LLMs) can facilitate grouping and assigning materials,” he said.
Bentley recently introduced carbon analysis capabilities built into the iTwin Experience, with automated material quantification, single-click report generation, and 3D visualization. These features, along with aggregation and exchange of data between the Bentley iTwin platform and other vendors, can help automate carbon analysis, noted Fernandes. “On large projects, there are typically multiple vendors,” he noted. “We want to facilitate workflows and aggregation of model data, [enabling designers to use different carbon analysis tools].” By making carbon data exchange more seamless, designers can begin carbon analysis earlier in design processes and consider cost-benefit trade-offs when making design decisions, he added.
In another sustainability example, Fernandes cited how computer vision was used to extract tree data from a digital twin model in the city of Mendoza, Argentina. Photogrammetry and mapping consultant GenMap created a digital twin of Mendoza’s green infrastructure and identified 1-million trees. Using Bentley’s mobile mapping technology, they digitized, geo-referenced, and obtained the dimensions of each tree, as well as surrounding roads and sidewalks, allowing efficient management of tree health conditions. With trees able to regulate air quality and create healthier living environments, tree management often plays a key part of sustainable design.
Photogrammetry consultant GenMap created a digital twin of the green infrastructure in Mendoza, Argentina, and identified 1-million trees. Image source: Bentley Systems.
Extending Across Project Lifecycle Phases
While AI offers numerous capabilities for design and analysis, the potential benefits do not stop there. AI technology can also be used to aid construction scheduling and extend into operations and maintenance phases of project lifecycles, noted Herrin. In a breakout session at YII, Herrin noted how AI-powered digital twins can “facilitate interconnected technology loops where each part of the asset’s lifecycle influences the next, ensuring investments are made both above and below ground.”
Also in the water breakout session, Serelle Corn, president and scheduling manager of Project Controls Cubed, LLC, observed that AI can help monitor asset data and make operations and maintenance decisions. “AI can tell you how [equipment] is performing, tell you when it’s going to fail,” she said. With comprehensive as-built data, “AI can tap into that information and provide suggestions or enhance decision making,” she said.
Combining AI and digital twin technology, facility owners and their consultants can “plan and design the work, as well as use that same data to optimize operations, run emergency scenario simulations, and make better decisions for future projects,” Herrin said. Looking further into operations, he noted that project data for water and wastewater treatment plants can be used during operations to train new operators or assist in aggregating data for multiple stakeholders such as operators, engineers, and consultants. “AI-powered digital twins can improve handoff between lifecycle phases – design, construction, and operation,” said Herrin.
As AI use extends across multiple lifecycles, interoperability of both data and software is critical for successful AI applications, added Herrin. In addition to using consumer-level tools such as ChatGPT , CoPilot, and Google Gemini (formerly Bard), infrastructure professionals may want to employ custom tools. “One of the key aspects of Bentley's technology is that users can also use their own AI technology, as our software is open and interoperable,” said Herrin.
Preparing for Resilience
With infrastructure professionals facing mounting workloads, staffing shortages, and ambitious goals for sustainability and resilience, AI and other digital technology can help address those challenges. Collaboration and interoperability will be critical to success, as different disciplines and technologies are employed to design, build, and operate resilient infrastructure facilities. In summarizing the need for multiple stakeholders to join forces and apply technology wisely in sustainable design, Fernandes noted: “We cannot do this alone.”
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