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Several droughts this century have forced states to take extraordinary measures to ensure freshwater supplies. For example, in 2006, the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant, in Kwinana, became the first seawater desalination plant used by an Australian city to improve resilience to droughts, with all other major cities following since then. Urban and Rural Differences Although it is a highly developed economy, Australia still struggles with often significant infrastructure variations between rural and city areas. As water utilities look for ways to improve their rural infrastructure, they must also factor in poor or absent mobile phone voice and data reception in many regional and remote areas. INDUSTRY CHALLENGES Aging Infrastructure and Inefficiencies Most of Australia's water infrastructure, built before the 1970s, is nearing the end of its lifecycle, resulting in leaks and breaks that cause water loss, as mentionned previously. Australian water utilities have been evaluating the condition of their assets and developing maintenance programs for operational efficiency and service continuity. The 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan v mentions "water security" as the most pressing issue for the sector, with the need to "source better data and information on the economic viability and sustainability of water resources. Robust, up-to-date data is essential". New technologies can help support these goals, but their implementation requires integration with legacy mission-critical systems such as those used for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. They must also add security controls to protect infrastructure against escalating cybersecurity threats. Financial Pressure on Utilities More than 11.6% of Australia's total water supply is lost as non-revenue water losses. 7 This increases the cost of supply for end consumers and businesses. Demand from population growth and losses in the system inevitably increases cost pres- sure for ongoing supply and management of water resources. Australia's water supply also suffers from an imbalance between consumer and industrial usage, with industrial and agriculture users contributing around 46% of total reve- nues while consuming 88% of the water. This imbalance is exacerbated in the agricultural sector, which contributes 6% of total revenues nationally while consuming 62% of national water resources. ■ Data source: about water usage in Australia 8,9,10 ■ Australians consumed a total of 1.8 millions of megaliters in 2019 spread over 9.7 million housholds (Australian Bureau of Statistics) - average of 2.61 persons per household - equaling about 200 liters per day per person. ■ Australia's urban water sector generates annual revenue of more than $15 billion. 11 ■ Australia spends an estimated US$6 billion per year on water and wastewater treatment services. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF WATER MANAGEMENT SECTOR IN AUSTRALIA The confluence of major information technology (including cloud computing, big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), etc.) and IoT has opened up exciting new possibilities for the modernisation of water infrastructure in Australia and worldwide. By standardising the collection and analysis of enormous pools of data - generated by IoT sensors installed across water networks and stored in cloud databases - these technologies allow water authorities to monitor and view the status of their networks in detail in near real-time . Intelligent analytics, which use AI to detect potential changes in sensor readings that may indicate an imminent fault, allow water authorities to proactively maintain or replace elements of the network that are close to failing. This will reduce manual inspections and help focus resources where they are the most needed. Live communications between central monitoring sites and remote equipment will be fundamentally important - and, since conventional mobile network coverage is spotty or absent across much of Australia's landmass, outside of major cities, alternatives will be needed. Many operations in the water cycle can leverage IoT to improve global water management efficiency. Possible applications are represented below. Figure 1: A strong imbalance between water usage and revenues in Australia Source: Bureau of Meteorology, National performance report 2020-2021 6. 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan, Chapter 6: Water, https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-09/2021%20Master%20Plan_1.pdf 7. Bureau of Meteorology, National performance report 2020-2021: urban water utilities, Part B, The complete dataset as of 30/11/2021, indicator W10.1 and W11.3, excluding Bulk Water Utilities,, available via: www.bom.gov.au/water/npr/ 8. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019, 4610.0 – Water Account, Australia, 2016-17, Canberra, Table 1.1, available via: www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4610.02016-17?OpenDocument#Data 9. ibid. 10. ibid., Table 12.1, available via: www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/subscriber.nsf/log?openagent&46100do012_201617.xls&4610.0&Data%20Cubes&2E2F199C0BE58A92CA2583AC00195CA9&0&2016-17&26.02.2019&Latest 11. Water Services Association of Australia and Infrastructure Partnerships Australia 2015, Doing the important, as well as the urgent: Reforming the urban water sector, Sydney, p 9, https://www.wsaa.asn.au/publication/doing-important-well-urgent-reforming-urban-water-sector www.lora-alliance.org p.5

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