Luke has spent his entire career in the water industry, specializing in water modeling, with roles based in Australia, UK and now Canada. He's also a recognised contributor to the open source software community. As the Director of Innovation at Qatium, Luke is leading the charge of the company’s efforts to accelerate digitalization in the water industry.

Lakewood is a city in Los Angeles County CA, with 80,000 customers and 200mi of water mains. Lakewood water utility wanted to develop a digital twin of their water distribution network.

By simulating their network in a digital environment, Lakewood could test field operations before running them in the physical world. The goal: to improve network performance, while ensuring continuity of service.
Starting with their old steady state model, the city leveraged Qatium’s water management platform to enhance their model. They included valves and hydrants, as well as updating demands from AMI and SCADA data. This easy upgrade significantly improved the calibration of their model.

The live connection to SCADA and IoT data also meant the model was continuously verified, ensuring the digital twin predicts system performance correctly. Essential for accurate decision making.

Lakewood uses the platform day-to-day to actively monitor the status of their network and ask what-if questions that previously involved consulting an engineer. Some of the operational scenarios explored by the city included: confirming capacity to supply neighboring utilities, planning unidirectional flushing and asset maintenance.

In this case study, members of the project team will share learnings from Lakewood’s digital twin journey, including key actions and next steps.