Bathrooms of the Future: Assessing the scope of smart water tech

That’s the question behind the Bathrooms of the Future research program launched by the Institute of Sustainable Futures in partnership with Sydney Water and GWA Caroma, the Australian bathroom fixture company with a focus on water conservation. “This technology has lots of potential for saving water, understanding how people use water in different environments, as well as many other insights,” explains program manager Alexandra Butler, research consultant.

“[And] it’s not just a technology question,” adds data analyst Yohan Kim, research principal. “It’s about asking bigger questions on integration, governance, and standardisation.”

Office observation

The first of the three streams of the project involved gathering data from smart bathroom technologies installed in a commercial building. The team placed a suite of devices into an office block in Rhodes, in Sydney’s west. “Historically, lots of research has been done on how water has been used in homes,” Butler says. “But a lot less has been done in non-residential spaces.”

And even though work-from-home orders interrupted the team’s observations, over the course of two years they were still able to get insights into patterns of water usage in commercial buildings, and how factors such as targeted messaging – for example, signage educating users about using a toilet’s half-flush option to cut down on water usage – can influence behaviours.

Forecasting future issues

Working in conjunction with Sydney Water, the team’s second stream looked at conceptualising where smart bathroom technology could take us in the future, looking at where we may be in a decade’s time, and how those ideas inform what needs to be done now. “What questions do we need to start preparing for?,” says Butler. “What are some of the issues that we haven’t even considered yet?”

Future concerns that came up included the possible privacy considerations around data gathered from household devices, increased electronic waste that would emerge, and the feasibility of different household appliances being able to compliment and integrate with one another to provide a holistic understanding of the entire abode when it comes to water and energy consumption.

A forum for ideas

The final, and major, stream in the project was a forum which gathered representatives from not only Sydney Water, GWA Caroma and UTS, but also other tertiary institutions such as Western Sydney University, Macquarie University and Deakin University, and relevant industry enterprises such as the NSW Smart Sensing Network, BMT environmental consultants, the Water Conservancy and more.

“[The forum was about asking] what are some of the questions the wider industry has, and what are some of the ways that technology can be used to address some of the challenges that we’re facing,” explains Butler. “[And looking at] what are the next steps for research in this space, and what are the partnerships that can develop.”

Over two days, the forum took a snapshot of the current situation when it comes to smart technology, as well as the present challenges and barriers to its uptake.

A key focus on the first day was looking at three areas within the area of water usage – building and facilities managers, water utility management, and the community – and investigating the current opportunities and barriers within those groups in regard to the adoption of smart technologies.

The Bathrooms of the future workshop. [l-r] Yohan Kim, Jasmine Wormleaton, Dean Crowe, Rita Milostnik, Chris Philpot, Ron Pulido.

The potential is clear

The second day of the forum looked ahead to see the potential of smart water technologies, and conceived several areas for future investigation and collaboration.

One aspect was optimising the use of smart taps to be both efficient without compromising on health compliance, and how machine learning could play a role in this.

Another aspect was seeing how a network of smart-tech devices could be used to streamline the response to a leak event. Analytics on the combination of usage data coming from each devices and smart meter data would allow us to remotely pinpoint where exactly the leak is occurring, potentially saving building managers from having to shut down the entire bathroom. “[Building managers are] constantly grappling with trying to get on top of maintenance. They’re trying to get a rapid response to issues that cause waste water or loss of amenity,” explains forum participant Adam Jones, principle environmental engineer at BMT. “So, these technologies hold a lot of promise in terms of short circuiting the events that might cause delays.”

The third area discussed was the role of data analysis sourced from the technology to assist in the management of water supply during peak supply periods.

Call for standardisation

Throughout the project, it became clear that governance and standardisation across utilities needs to be established sooner rather than later, says Kim. With no standard measures across various devices and technologies, it’s enormously difficult to compare and align data. “It’s particularly important because a lot of the opportunities for energy conservation and water efficiency lies in where we can look at both together. To do that we need standardised governance for all aspects from the individual devices all the way to precinct level.”

And if the data reporting is to grow as technology uptake increases, it’s an issue that needs tackling now, says Butler. “You can imagine that huge hurdle of suddenly realising down the track that it could be too late to merge this data. We don’t want it to get to that point.”

Important partnerships

Kim and Butler emphasise the value of partnering with both Sydney Water and Caroma for the project, and open up the potential for future collaborations in this area.

When it comes to Sydney Water, the impact of this technology as it becomes installed in more and more buildings is enormous. “It’s going to have a huge implication for water consumption levels at the city level,” say Kim. “So they really want to step in early and help us to shape our thinking of how we can use this technology when it accumulates.”

“The opportunities for utilities like Sydney Water from smart technology are increasing all the time,” says program partner Andre Boerema, program manager (drought) and water efficiency expert for Sydney Water. “Tradition was that we’d just get data back on a quarterly basis from water meters, now with digital metering we’re able to get data much more quickly and we’re able to model demand on a much higher resolution than has ever been possible in the past.”

Working with Caroma was also invaluable. With their smart technology now rolling out to around 250 buildings across the country, the company shares the project team’s focus on the benefit to building managers, as well as in the wider context of sustainability. “By integrating AI into our smart systems, we’ll be moving to carbon neutral buildings, and I can see this technology is going to help in doing that significantly,” says program partner Dr Steve Cummings, innovation director at GWA Caroma.

The Bathrooms of the future workshop. [l-r] Alexandra Butler, Oliver Obst, Shamsur Rahim, Karl Welsch, Dean Crowe, Simon Fane, Jasmine Wormleaton, Chris Philpot, Rita Milostnik, Ron Pulido.

The future is here

As Kim explains, the instalment of smart devices is already happening on a commercial level, it’s only a matter of time until it makes its way into the domestic sphere as well, so it’s an area that offers plenty of scope for further research.

The team is very hopeful to continue investigating this area, especially as it has so much potential to impact the community in meaningful ways. While water efficiency is the team’s focus, Butler says that the project has opened the potential for so many other areas as well. “We started to think about health benefits if we had this technology in aged care homes, or how they could be used to improve irrigation in open spaces during droughts, there are so many aspects where this smart technology could bring benefits.”