Water & Wastewater Challenges Help Leveraging of IIoT

Overview

Water utilities are being challenged to operate more efficiently, lower operating costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.  Water scarcity has become a universal issue and reducing nonrevenue water has reached critical mass at utilities worldwide.  This is particularly true in arid regions that rely on costly desalinated water as their primary source of potable water.  The utilities are turning to SCADA to increase operator efficiency, engineering efficiency, and process optimization, while also being more responsive to the needs of their customers.

The latest generation of SCADA platforms provide the capability to collect, sort, and analyze data quickly and display it on executive dashboards. A surge of new hardware and software technologies emerging in the industrial sector are disrupting the way systems are designed and organizations operate. Some of the key disruptive technologies being incorporated into SCADA systems include the cloud, virtualization, mobility, Big Data analytics, and other Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies.   

Some key findings from ARC Advisory Group’s recent market study on SCADA for water & wastewater include:

• External forces like regulations, aging infrastructure, and overall sustainability force the introduction of new technology solutions
• Cybersecurity continues to grow as a major concern

• The industry is beginning to accept cloud-based solutions

Industry Headwinds

In the past, SCADA systems typically employed a monolithic master terminal unit (MTU) to run the SCADA software. Over the last decade, a more distributed architecture has emerged that employs a primary and secondary server for redundancy, plus a historian server and a real-time database, a domain controller server, an OPC server, and various application servers.  While an improvement, this “20th Century” approach is not adequate to address today’s diverse challenges and issues, such as:

• Aging infrastructure
• Increasing demands for water and the impact of changing weather patterns
• Inadequate and/or ineffective wastewater infrastructure in many parts of the world
• Obtaining funding for large projects during periods of tight budgets and economic uncertainty
• Privatization and public/private partnerships (PPP) requiring efficient transition of legacy systems to meet new demands from all stake-holders
• Increasing concerns about both physical security and cybersecurity

• Increasing demands upon the aging, shrinking, internal workforce and associated loss of knowledge, experience, and skills

Technology Addressing the Challenges

With the convergence of IT and the control world, we see SCADA following IT methodology and using virtualization software, reducing hardware and optimizing IT assets. With the advancement of cloud computing, server-less architectures are on the horizon.

This convergence drives SCADA to become a more integrated part of overall operations. Technology drivers such as the proliferation of industrial Ethernet networks, wireless mobile applications, and wireless networks for plants are fast tracking the trend of tying SCADA to other business systems, such as performance software, electronic work instructions, GIS, asset management, CMMS, SOP, and hydraulic modeling software. In fact, SCADA is becoming a platform or the centralized data hub for other business systems. Ultimately, this will offer new opportunities for water & wastewater utilities. The advanced systems provide savings in labor, chemicals, equipment repairs, and energy consumption. As operators harness the value of business systems data, the opportunities for additional savings will grow.

So although SCADA isn’t the panacea for the industry, it can certainly pro-vide answers to many of the tough issues utilities face today. The consolidation of water utilities as well as the integration of the complete water cycle into a single operation is leading to larger and more complex systems. Areas with rapid growth include Ethernet networking, smartphone and tablet applications, energy efficiency, and enterprise integration. Security issues will grow more complex with the developing, “view anywhere” trend. This refers to remote access to SCADA systems from computers, tablets, and smartphones. Video use continues to expand as physical security remains a high priority for water districts and agencies. To help overcome the associated bandwidth issues, we’re seeing a trend towards wireless mesh video networks.

Today’s SCADA systems and components tend to be modular, interoperable, and – in some cases - even interchangeable. This provides utilities with a wide variety of choices and opportunities for customization. SCADA systems are also becoming increasingly ubiquitous, as thin clients, web portals, and web-based products gain popularity with most major vendors. However, remote access to the systems by end users (often via smartphones and tablets) introduces additional security considerations, requiring new policies to be put in place to maintain a secure environment.

What About Cybersecurity?

The increased use of open standards for communications and interconnectivity has also increased security concerns. New technologies leveraged for remote SCADA access have opened the door for hacking and other malicious activity.  These technologies include wide area networks (WANs), wireless application protocol (WAP), and the myriad of wireless Ethernet connectivity options. In response, the traditional divide between SCADA administration and IT has narrowed. SCADA systems that enable remote connectivity must support the security paradigms of the IT industry, such as secure socket layer (SSL), demilitarized zones (DMZ), virtual private networks (VPN), and firewalls.

Modern SCADA systems can also ease compliance with industry-specific government regulations and standards. These include US Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), NERC, the Roadmap to Secure Control Systems in the Water Sector, and Title 21 CFR Part 11.  Similar standards and regulations exist in other countries and regions. Adhering to these regulations will drive the need for traditionally IT-related integrated configuration management and traceability tools and methods. Clearly, a robust and rigorous approach to both physical and cybersecurity is essential.

Recommendations

Strategic planning for water & wastewater infrastructure investments and transitioning the operation and management of existing assets to incorporate new advances in technology is critical. 

Based on ARC research and analysis, we recommend the following actions for owner-operators and other technology users:

• Articulate your needs in terms of outcomes: It is important not only for end users to understand their specific issues and needs, but also to be able to articulate the needs in terms of outcomes (what you want to achieve). Too often, end users translate their needs into technology, labor, and timing specifications. However, since many end users today have not been involved in a project for years, they may not be current on all aspects of technology and thus are not well-positioned to assemble the best solution of a vendor’s portfolio. Instead, specifications should be centered around solving the current and future foreseen challenges.
• Develop a “living” plan: Users need to work with their preferred suppliers to develop short- and long-term plans. Because most facilities are run as an expense-based business, rather than as a profit center, it’s crucial to be able to forecast the demands on the system.  Plans should include all aspects related to operations including labor availability, forecast expansion, and leveraging new automation capabilities.
• Design for security: To effectively prevent or mitigate cyber-attacks, end users need to adopt a comprehensive security framework that includes fundamental changes in policy formulation, establishing a cyber-aware workforce, multi-level net-work protection, and proactive threat assessment.

If you would like to buy this report or obtain information about how to become a client, please    Contact Us

Keywords: SCADA, Water, Wastewater, IIoT, Cloud, Cybersecurity, ARC Advisory Group.