United KingdomEnergy and utilities2025 – ongoingPennon Group (South West Water)
AI prediction of sewer blockages and review of pipe CCTV footage
South West Water's AI sewer trial was estimated to have prevented about 200 pollution incidents
Problem
Blocked sewers can overflow and cause pollution. South West Water wanted to spot likely blockages before they happened.
Approach
The utility fed real-time data from about 12,000 sensors across its network into an AI system that tracks water level changes to flag likely overflows. A second AI tool processes hours of CCTV footage to detect defects in wastewater pipes. The work was run as a trial.
Results
Takeaway
The 200 incidents figure is an estimate by project leaders, not an audited count.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Energy and utilities
- Business function
- Production and quality
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Predictive analytics and MLComputer vision
- Adoption
- Partner co-development
- Goal
- Quality and risk
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
The brief reports that South West Water said an AI trial to predict sewer blockages helped reduce pollution events. It describes the sensor data and the CCTV defect detection. It gives an estimate of about 200 incidents prevented, attributed to project leaders.
Full details are in the original sources.