Safe & Tasty Water, Forever:
How Cities in Japan are Realizing Sustainable Water Supply through Co-Creation

Japan's water also exhibits high quality as drinking water but are often taken for granted. As there are few other countries where water can be drunk straight from the faucet, many visitors to Japan are surprised to see that water can be enjoyed right from the tap. This advantage is due to the Water Supply Act, which established water quality standards, and to the water purification facilities established and run by a large and skilled workforce to meet these strict standards.

However, the situation with water and sewage services in Japan is getting increasingly severe. The majority of domestic water and sewage services were developed during an intensive period of building during Japan's rapid economic growthin the 1960 - 70’s. Since then, water pipes and other water facilities have aged, leading to over 20,000 cases of water leakages and supply interruptions annually.

Meanwhile, revenues are declining because of decreases in regional water supply customers caused by such factors as the falling birth rate/aging population and regional depopulation. At the same time, investments in such projects as facility maintenance and earthquake resistance are on the rise. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, about 30% of local-government public water utilities are already operating at a loss.Aggravating the situation is the approximately 30% decrease from its peak in 1980 of the number workers taking part in water utility operations, which is causing issues in the passing on of necessary knowledge, such as water pipe leakage detection techniques and maintenance skills. Under these circumstances, it will be no easy task to continue providing safe and delicious water as in the past.

Simply put, Japan's water utilities are suffering a growing loss of people, money, and skills. As budgets for social infrastructure continue to shrink and as large-scale natural disasters continue to assail Japan, the infrastructure for water and sewage services must still be sustained somehow. Although a critical issue for Japan, it is also shared by the rest of the world.

Collaborative Creation with Hakodate City

One example of this is our collaborative creation with the city of Hakodate in Hokkaido. Hakodate provides water-supply services to about 260,000 people (as of March 2018) and has run a stable water utility operation based on a philosophy of providing safe and clean water in harmony with nature. While the utility works at keeping its income and expenditure stable, it has similar problems with other regions: water purification plants, pipelines, and other facilities are aging, and experienced workers are reaching retirement.

Hakodate itself has seen a drop in population from its peak of 345,165 in 1980 to 265,979 in 2015. Water revenues have also fallen from about 4.5 billion yen in 2006 to about 4.1 billion yen in 2015, while the number of people engaged in work involving the city's water and sewage services has also seen a decline of 76 from 2006 to 186 by the end of 2015.

With an eye toward future challenges, Hakodate solicited proposals based on a “Design Build Operate” (DBO) model. In such project, the building work is conducted by the public sector, while operations are handled by the private sector. This resulted in the awarding of a project contract in March 2019 to Hakodate Aqua Solution, a consortium comprising Hitachi, Tomioka Electric Construction, and Hitachi High-Tech Fielding Corporation.

Highlights of this project are its long term of 20 years and that it allows the public to freely make proposals in accordance with changes in the project situation. With the project having just begun in April 2019, the public has already started making various types of new proposals and initiating various forms of verifications.

This is reflected, for example, in the plant facility design of water purification plants. In addressing how to integrate water purification plants as the water service population decreases, optimal proposals are being made that cover such items as water intake points and water pipe layouts, while watching the water quality of the water resources. Other initiatives that have been started include residual salt control for maintaining safe water, the drafting of improvement plans for operation and maintenance management work, and the digitalization of field inspection work facilitated by newly introduced facility management systems.

In addition, the project has plans to boost the acceleration of work streamlining and cost reduction as it moves forward with demonstrations of digital solutions, including“work navigation implementation”, “plant operation support”(an AI system that uses operational history), and “water quality forecasting”.

Addressing the issue of how to develop safe, secure, and sustainable water utilities requires not only high-quality facilities and systems for water purification plants and sewage treatment plants, but also general optimization based on a broad spectrum of linkages between OT and IT.

In this respect, Hitachi has for many years been providing reliability-first, stability-first, and safety-first water environment solutions comprising various systems and services for water and sewage service providers—all intended to support lifelines. In particular, Hitachi has a considerable track record of delivering monitor control systems that form the core of water and sewage systems, with installations reaching about 2,100.

O&M^*1 Support Digital Solution, a cloud-based service for water and sewage services that uses IoT, represents the systemization of this extensive business track record and experience.

This solution makes use of Lumada, Hitachi’s unique solutions for accelerating digital innovation. In this system, various water/sewage facility data, including operational information, work records, and equipment failure and repair information, is gathered in the cloud using IoT, where forefront digital technologies such as AI, analytics, and Augmented Reality (AR) are used to support the visualization, labor-saving, and streamlining of operational and maintenance work, and also the passing on of know-how and expertise.

Beginning with the city of Hakodate, initiatives using this solution are being executed for the water utilities of several other municipalities. This same solution is also delivering tremendous benefits in the water and sewage service comprehensive contracts entered into the city of Toda in Saitama Prefecture.

One example of this is the introduction of tablet-based maintenance and inspection in order to improve operation management. Evidence comprising of when and who conducted field inspection work has been converted into data. The organization, visualization, and analysis of this data will make it useful in solving a variety of issues, from the early detection of faults to the streamlining of operations.