What's New For 2025?

For a start, more new water utility speakers and a deeper dive into successful technology adoption and data-driven decision-making.

How Leading Utilities Are Tackling Water Challenges Worldwide– Sharing More Examples From Densely Populated Urban Areas Facing Severe Water Stresses

This year, we are reaching out to a broader range of water utilities, including many new ones with whom we haven’t previously engaged. Remarkably, over half of our research calls so far have been with these new utilities. This expansion is key to making the event more dynamic and relevant, fostering greater international participation from water utilities and solution providers that can help. 

Our goal is to bring many of these utilities on board as speakers. For example, we are in active discussions with water utilities in Jakarta, Indonesia, where they are tackling the challenge of high initial costs despite compelling business cases for enhanced water conservation and leak detection. In Bangkok, the focus is on revolutionising urban water management, while in Nigeria, the primary issue is managing water scarcity during peak summer months in rapidly expanding urban centers.

Notably, public acceptance in these regions is already strong—communities recognise the value of smart water technologies and are eager to adopt them. This raises an important question: What lessons can countries in the early stages of systemic droughts learn from these pioneering examples?

Additionally, we've connected with a local water utility in Argentina focused on reducing non-revenue water and upgrading infrastructure, particularly in overcoming the technical challenges of integrating older systems. These conversations have been incredibly insightful, and while we haven’t finalised our final agenda yet, we’re diligently working to include new perspectives that can offer solutions to utilities facing similar pressures. This initiative also creates significant business development opportunities for vendors, as bringing fresh case studies and expert speakers is one of our top priorities for this year’s conference.

New Technology Evolution 

The second major improvement this year is in the realm of technology. While the core categories of technology for smart water metering haven’t changed dramatically, the innovations and enhancements within these categories are now more focused on cost-effectiveness, accuracy and precision. Many utilities are particularly interested in the real-time data collection and analytics capabilities of AI-powered AMI systems, which, despite their higher cost, enable utilities to make quick, informed decisions.

New Meters With Two-Way Communication 

We’ll also explore advancements in two-way communication technologies, which not only collect data from meters but can also send commands, such as remotely shutting off water. These innovations are especially crucial for utilities that have already implemented smart grid technologies, especially in North America, where integrating AI and IoT with smart grids is gaining momentum.

Improvements To Metering Hardware

Recently, there has been a significant shift in metering hardware, with new models offering greater accuracy, durability, and lower maintenance requirements—vital innovations for utilities managing large-scale deployments. Some of these new meters include additional sensors, like pressure and temperature, providing even more comprehensive data for utilities.

Ensuring Cyber Safe Smart Metering Systems 

Another hot topic for 2025 is cybersecurity. With the current global tensions, ensuring that all new technologies include robust cybersecurity measures is more critical than ever. We’ll discuss these enhancements in depth—how secure are these systems, and what steps can be taken to protect increasingly digital infrastructures?

The Latest Connectivity Innovations 

We’re also seeing innovation in low-power IoT connectivity, such as NB-IoT, which is becoming a popular choice for cost-effective and scalable communication solutions. Similarly, more utilities are developing customer portals, and we're seeing emerging communication technologies like cellular-based metering, LPWANs, and even Amazon Sidewalk, which uses existing consumer devices for data transmission. We’ll explore how these technologies compare cost, coverage, and signal strength.

Proven Results From The Latest AI Innovations 

In the past 12 months, we’ve also seen a wave of AI and modelling innovations hitting the market. We’ll highlight the best of these to show how they can integrate with current systems to enhance utility operations. 

As you can see, technology integration and innovation are central themes for 2025, and we’re excited to showcase many of the latest advancements.