Smart meters, smart water, smart societies: The iWIDGET project

Abstract

Population growth and economic development are main causes for increases in the demand for freshwater throughout the world. The likely impacts of climate change and increased urbanisation will result in the increase of the share of global water use to satisfy urban demand and will make water security for urban population even more difficult and costly to achieve. iWIDGET is an EU FP7 funded project (2012-2015), aiming to advance knowledge and understanding about smart metering technologies in order to develop novel, robust, practical and cost-effective methodologies and tools to manage urban water demand in households across Europe. The main scientific challenges for iWIDGET are the management and extraction of useful information from vast amounts of high-resolution consumption data, the development of customised intervention and awareness campaigns to influence behavioural change, and the integration of iWIDGET concepts into a set of decision-support tools ('widgets') for water utilities and consumers, applicable in differing local conditions, in three case studies in the UK, Portugal and Greece.