Pushing the boundaries during the transition: digitalisation, decarbonisation and decentralisation

• Understanding the changing landscape: evaluating the scale of potential disruption
• Opportunities for new technology: improving operations to meet and exceed targets
• How can networks deliver cheaper, faster, greener and better?

Case study | Northern Gas Networks

Upgrading analytical capacity: transforming raw data into information

Using digital technology to deliver innovation

• Design Thinking: re-designing how we approach innovation
• Problem vs tech: facing the challenges of digital technology pull
• Innovation “exit strategy”: how to successfully integrate innovation

Panel discussion

Strategic priorities for 2019 an beyond: creating the managing of the future

• What could the future of networks look like?
• Which areas of operations are most likely to be transformed by new access to insights?
• To what extent will data analytics change incident-response strategies?
• What are the biggest obstacles to change in the short term?
• How can data be transformed into a usable form?
• Communicating the benefits to stakeholders: what are the most compelling advantages to analytical capacity?
• What should a network look for when recruiting data scientists?
• Working together to share practical insights: learning from each other in this era of change

Case study | Thames Water

Innovation, transformation and change: creating a maintenance strategy for the
future

• Maximising the potential of existing assets: optimising capability while ensuring asset resilience
• Collecting high quality information to manage risk and prepare for competition
• Working with stakeholders and alliances to improve performance and deliver efficiency

Case study | Asset Health Monitoring

Making sense of information to develop informed maintenance decisions

Case study | Beyond Visual Line of Sight

A full rollout of unmanned drone technology

In recent years drones had seemed to stall as a transformative force for intelligence and operations. Beyond Visual Line of Sight technology transforms their proposition for asset owners, allowing companies to collect data in a way that is safer and more cost-efficient than traditional methods. Learn how this new technology has significantly improved the economics and feasibility of drone inspections, and how it has changed the game for Wales & West Utilities.

Case study | Twincident

Harnessing the power of Digital Twin technology to reduce the impact of incidents

By bringing the future to life using Digital Twin technology, Northumbrian Water seeks to help to protect people and the environment during an incident. This virtual model of the real world can help to predict the impact of a burst pipe or heavy rainfall allowing it to understand likely outcomes and therefore prioritise the appropriate response actions. Hear from Chris Jones about the benefits of bringing together the new computer models of flooding with real-time monitoring data for informed decision making when it really matters.

Case study | Summer 2018

Modelling future scenarios with 110 years of weather data: informing reactions to drought

Through access to historical weather data, NI Water was able to model inflow and outflow scenarios to map the projected storage of reservoirs. This enabled NI Water to decide which reservoirs to prioritise during the droughts of the Summer 2018. Learn from this example of the benefits of using innovative pools of data, including weather, geological, thermal, and seismic sources to improve a variety of different aspects of your network.

Stepping up data standards: breaking down barriers to analytic success

• What are the benefits of investing in data quality?
• Moving from concept to reality: implementing a large-scale data cleanse
• Sharing best practice to over come industry-wide barriers

Adapting regulatory frameworks to enable effective uses of data

Panel and peer-to-peer discussion | Implementing innovation

In this session, our panel of experts will discuss how innovation can be improved across the industry. Delegates will then have the opportunity to break into roundtables to discuss and debate the practical steps needed to embed innovation within your business model in order to create a truly collaborative effort.

Working collaboratively to magnify the industry’s efforts together

• Sharing insights from pilots: what are the learnings so far?
• Taking developments to the next stage: where should the industry look to move next?
• Innovation from within: developing an innovation culture that breeds creativity
• Learning from the past: how to avoid the pitfalls of innovation
• Overcoming the image problem: ensuring the industry attracts the right type of talent