Role of Water Policies in the Adoption of Smart Water Metering and the Future Market

Abstract

Both status and progress in smart water metering (SWM) implementations in five selected countries (i.e., United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, and South Korea) are investigated in this study. Despite the countless benefits of SWM implementation, the diffusion of the SWM technologies has been slow due to various challenges, including the absence of compulsory water policies, the lack of support from customers and expertise, and weak cost–benefit analysis. Over the past 30 years, the aforementioned countries have transitioned from a fixed charging to a volumetric charging regime composed of traditional water meters and SWM. Both the status and progress of SWM implementation are quite different among countries, although governments across the world have been applying water policies responding to water scarcity, population growth, and water demand management. However, the absence of strong water policies and political support for SWM implementation resulted in the slow and retarded spread of SWM implementation. Although several changes in water policies have occurred since 1990, there is no compulsory law for SWM implementation. Between 1995 and 2010, pilot/trial cases for SWM were dominant. After 2010, the number of SWM implementation kept increasing and all countries experienced more concentrated SWM implementation, despite the variances in both endpoints and completion of SWM implementation depending on water policies (i.e., acts and regulations) encouraging SWM implementations. The global market for SWM has consistently grown to USD 5.92 billion in 2020. Finally, the application of favourable water policies to optimize the use of water resources and to promote sustainable development is expected to drive the SWM market further.

Smart water management

“…While the scale and timing of deployments may differ across these countries, the growth trajectories after 2015 are similar. The time gap between adoption is material, as earlier adopters will be biased toward AMI (basic) metering compared with the full‐blown AMR deployments seen in for example, at Southern and Thames Water in England (Msamadya et al, 2022).…”

Scientometric Review of Smart Water Management Literature From the Sustainable Development Goal Perspective

“…Brentan et al (2018) presented a hybrid technique based on self-organizing maps coupled with k-means algorithms to promote the data processing ability of water distribution systems. Many researchers have found smart water metering to be effective for improving water-use efficiency (Cardell-Oliver et al, 2016;Giurco et al, 2010;Hsia et al, 2012;Li & Chong, 2019;Msamadya et al, 2022). Other emerging technologies, such as digital twins (Ramos et al, 2022) and deep learning (J.…”

“…However, few studies considered, as required by T8, what the governments per se should do to develop a friendlier environment for the successful execution of those smart solutions. The literature analysis shows that smart water management remains a hypothetical aspiration if solid policies and government political support are absent (Msamadya et al, 2022).…”

“…Smart cities (SDG 11) also feature in the literature, with 47 publications identified. Considering that the maturity of institutional environments serves as the foundation for the application of smart water management solutions (Msamadya et al, 2022), Feingold et al (2018 suggested the City Blue Approach to assessing the status of city water management, itemizing three considerations: main challenges, adequacy of existing water management, and capacity shortage of existing water governance. Other researchers have honed in on specific aspects of city water management, such as water governance processes adapting water-sensitive urban design (Madonsela et al, 2019) and the fragility of city water infrastructure systems in uncertain future conditions (Babovic et al, 2018).…”

Estimated Impacts of Smart Water Meter Implementation on Domestic Hot Water Consumption and Related Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Case Studies

“…This study aimed to assess the impact of implementing SWM on the WEC nexus. To achieve this, data from five case studies in four developed countries, with significant global impact and diverse water-related policies [17], were analyzed and examined. The primary focus was to assess the effect of SWM implementation on GHG emissions resulting from DHW consumption at an annual scale.…”