Water & Wastewater Asia May/Jun 2021

FOCUS WATER & WASTEWATER ASIA | MAY/JUNE 2021
While COVID-19 may eventually
subside, a new normal has been
established – and the last few
months have clearly convinced
decision-makers that more
digitisation and smarter water is
absolutely imperative to having
better operational control during
situations like the COVID-19
pandemic, as well as to drive
competitiveness and increase
quality and reliability.
existing control infrastructure. An
edge controller can easily augment
both the control philosophies and
transform existing operations.
Edge automation is the philosophy
of operating the process on the
edge of the cloud. The idea is for
the traditional process control to
have the ability to interoperate with
external algorithms and commands,
while focusing on the core process
automation. For example, a strategy
to increase the throughput of a
plant may be running on the edge
controller or even on the cloud.
Whenever necessary, it may tweak
the input parameters or set points
of the process to achieve a desired
result.
LASTLY, THE COVID-19
PANDEMIC HAS
ACCELERATED THE
PROCESS OF DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION FOR
MANY UTILITIES; HOW DO
YOU THINK THIS TREND
WILL CONTINUE IN 2021?
There have been examples
of how each industry has
responded and adapted
amazingly to the threat of
COVID-19, and there have been
many reports of employees
quarantining themselves in plants
to ensure that the operations to
treat and supply water or process
wastewater are not hampered
– these are mission-critical
activities.
Governments around the world are
engaged in quantitative easing,
and money from that is finding
its way into the water industry as
well. There are specific legislations
that are specifically targeted
at the modernisation of water
infrastructure, and a lot of these
funds are going to continue finding
their way into the implementation
of digital infrastructure, enhancing
control system architecture in 2021
and beyond.
At the end of this, I would like to
emphasise that it’s the robust and
highly available edge-enabled
control system that is imperative to
take even baby steps in the journey
towards digital transformation. That
is the most crucial piece of any part
of digital transformation.
Edge controllers can also upload
data across processes or
geographies to the cloud. This data
can in turn be viewed and analysed
at a single location for comparative
analysis and insight. For example,
users can compare energy usage
data of 100 motors of the same
manufacturer across different
processes or geographies, to
compare energy consumption data
and identify faults before they occur.
An acute need for more
digitisation has been felt,
especially with regards to better
remote monitoring and control
over built-in security. Plant
operators and engineers should
be able to remotely control plants
and diagnose faults so that
process continuity is maintained,
and human intervention can be
more action-oriented instead of
diagnosis-oriented.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Manish Sharma is the global industry marketing
leader for energy and water industry for Emerson’s
PACSystems portfolio. He has 20 years of experience
in marketing, product management and control
systems R&D.
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