In Dec. 2021, WaterStart hosted its third webinar as part of CHANNELS Connect. CHANNELS Connect is a member’s-only webinar series intended to highlight applications of innovation across the global water sector. These signature events are uniquely designed to encourage and facilitate knowledge-sharing among WaterStart’s membership network.

To be inclusive of our global membership’s time zones, an AM webinar and a PM webinar were hosted. Each recording, in their entirety, can be found below.

In Summary

Panel Discussion- Operationalizing Net Zero Goals

Moderated by:

Ramsay Huntley, Sustainable Finance Strategist, Wells Fargo (U.S.A)

Presenters included:

Ian Olson, Senior Director of Global Sustainability, McDonald’s Corporation (U.S.A)

Albert Cho, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, Xylem, Inc. (U.S.A)

Richard Buckingham, Climate Change & Carbon Manager, Anglian Water (United Kingdom)

With net zero initiatives at the forefront of major planning efforts of state and local agencies, solution providers, and major corporations, WaterStart organized a panel that included representation from varying organizations intersected by water management. The discussion centered on the challenges each of these organizations face as they begin to operationalize their net zero goals- culturally, among their customers, and among the public, in general.

Priority Pitch- Center for Smart Infrastructure

Presenters included:

Clifford Chan, General Manager, East Bay Municipal Utility District (U.S.A.)

Professor Kenichi Soga, Donald H. McLaughlin Professor, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A)

The presenters highlight how challenges associated with aging infrastructure, earthquakes, and climate change press the need for adaptable infrastructure and whole-life infrastructure sensing. The vision for the Center is to provide innovative solutions to realize adaptable infrastructure systems with “intelligence for life.” Through the Center, they are setting out to create an infrastructure innovation ecosystem inclusive of all segments of the water industry to address these challenges.

Pilot Pitch- Automated CCTV Defect Identification

Presenters included:

Sean Rennie, Infrastructure Maintenance Program Manager, Anglian Water (United Kingdom)

Amanda Siqueira, CEO & Co-founder, VAPAR (United Kingdom)

Anglian Water and VAPAR highlight their successful 10-week pilot to remotely process 10km of sewer CCTV inspection footage. The discussion provides an overview of the issue Anglian was facing, how they sourced the solution, and the positive outcomes of the project, which include digitizing over 2000 pipe features and defects in one-fifth the time of manual inspections. The webinar included perspectives from both Anglian and VAPAR. To learn more about VAPAR and this specific project with Anglian, please consider reviewing the VAPAR case study/pilot included on CHANNELS, under Pilots.

Recordings to both webinars in their entirety can be found here-

AM session 

PM session