SINGAPORE: Singapore’s national water agency has devised a road map that will progressively see artificial intelligence, big data and smart work redesign being rolled out over the next five years to improve its operations and water management.
PUB announced on Wednesday (Jul 11) that the road map will help to achieve smarter water quality management and work process.
“Business as usual is not sustainable,” said Mr Michael Toh, PUB’s chief information officer.
“Not adopting new technology exposes us to inefficiencies and risk, and can render us obsolete or unable to adapt to technological disruptions,” he added.
SMART WATER QUALITY MONITORING
As part of its smart road map, the water agency is exploring two pieces of innovation for remote water quality management.
The Remote Micro-Invertebrate Detector allows PUB to perform automated microscopic imaging on water samples and identify micro-invertebrates. (Photo: Vanessa Lim)
The first is an autonomous boat that can navigate itself through choppy waters to collect samples. First piloted at Pandan reservoir in November 2017, the boat’s effectiveness in monitoring water quality is currently being evaluated.
PUB is also developing a device that can perform automated microscopic imaging of water samples and identify micro-invertebrates – small organisms found in raw water.
This will help to improve the existing process, which requires a trained biologist to manually count the number of micro-invertebrates in a sample. This process could take up to two hours per sample.
