Collaborating To Execute The AI-Water Nexus

By Andrew Dugan

Amazon and Xylem partner to tackle Mexico’s leaking water systems as the country balances water scarcity and a growing tech sector.

Across Mexico, it is becoming a luxury to have enough water to consistently wash clothes, quench thirst, and bathe. Chronic drought, rapid urbanization, and increasingly, industrialization have many concerned that Mexican cities could soon experience a “Day Zero”, the likes seen in India and South Africa in recent years.

Considering how precious water has become to the average Mexican citizen, it’s difficult to calculate the value wasted as 40% of the country’s treated drinking water is lost to leaking distribution pipes. As local aquifers shrink and rainfall becomes less predictable, millions of gallons spill into the ground every day, never to reach the people who need it.

In parallel to this water crisis, Mexico is undergoing an economic boom. This boom includes cities like Mexico City and Monterrey, which are building data centers that power artificial intelligence (AI), further stressing urban water systems. In order to meet residential and industrial water demands, the country’s utilities are rethinking how they manage water, with leaking pipes as a top priority. Coincidentally, AI may play a key role in solving the issue.

Making Sense Of Data

Over the past decade, utilities have been adopting sensors and systems to monitor and manage their distribution pipelines and treatment plants. These products alert staff of leaks, pressure drops, and pump failures, to name a few, enabling better asset management. System failures that were once more difficult to identify can now be predicted, located, and diagnosed, removing guess work for utility workers. However, implementing these products has created a new challenge for utilities — disparate systems that do not share data, creating an IT and an operational burden on the utilities´ workers that rely more and more on information to carry out their activities.

This is particularly clear in the non-revenue water space, where SCADAs, sensors, meters, and other products are rarely integrated, making the detection process longer and more complex and leaving valuable information underused. This widespread problem of data silos and user experience complexity led to the creation of Xylem Vue.

“Through proper placement of sensors in a water system, Xylem Vue can provide utilities, for example, a digital twin of their full distribution system, so that they know what it is going to happen even before it happens,” explained Snehal Desai, Xylem's Chief Growth and Innovation Officer. “Coupled with pattern recognition, the sensors can detect whether there is a leak or if there’s about to be a leak, solving the problems in real time and appropriating resources where the issues are ongoing.”

Xylem Vue is a vendor agnostic software and analytics platform, making data accessible to those who need it, when they need it and in the way they will need it. It can tailor data to the responsibilities of each utility worker’s role by analyzing and transforming that data into meaningful information for each role, ensuring that data is actionable for each department.

Monterrey and Mexico City immediately saw the solution’s potential to improve their ongoing leak programs. As Xylem was engaging with them to integrate this technology, Amazon approached the company about its global initiative for managing its data centers’ water use in over thirty countries.

Water-AI Nexus Center for Excellence

Recognizing the relationship between the benefits that AI offers water systems to operate efficiently and AI’s growing demand for water at data centers in Mexico, Amazon partnered with Xylem to expand the use of Xylem Vue in Mexico City and Monterrey, to empower those municipalities with the leak detection technology.

This investment is part of its larger global effort, the Water-AI Nexus Center for Excellence, to develop sustainable water practices for AI infrastructure while also applying AI to solve global water challenges.

"We recognize that addressing water scarcity requires collaborative action on a global scale," said Rubén Mugártegui, AWS Mexico Managing Director. "We're working hand-in-hand with local municipalities and organizations to create sustainable solutions for the communities we serve."

In Monterrey, the Amazon-Xylem partnership expanded its existing use of Xylem Vue to two new districts of the city. For Mexico City and Querétaro, Xylem Vue has been integrated into the utility’s leak detection program enabling the corresponding departments deploy resources more effectively toward leak repairs.

What’s To Come

Although this partnership is recent, the application is already reducing non-revenue water in these cities while making more water available to residents and industries. The projects are estimated to annually save upwards of 800 million liters (211 million gallons) of water in Mexico City and 560 million liters (148 million gallons) in Monterrey.

“This partnership demonstrates how public-private collaboration and innovation can create meaningful impact in urban water management. Together, we are building a more sustainable and water-resilient future for Mexico City,” said Ricardo Alberto Munguía Alfaro, Deputy Secretary of Hydraulic Infrastructure Operations and Efficiency, SEGIAGUA (Mexico City’s Secretariat of Comprehensive Water Management).

“It’s a story of what’s to come. When there’s a convergence of interest and need, that’s where partnerships shine,” added Desai. “We think this model works for lots of different sectors. This is an opportunity to accelerate responsible water use and invest in underfunded infrastructure.”