I've seen everyone and welcome to today's webinar on smart water trends in the US. My name is Adam Taylor and the senior analyst with my Rabbit Ish Boutique bars and I was scared since 2002. That's really my pleasure to present a few slides from a recent research survey among utilities. And moderate a great pilot. Speakers from the water and connectivity industry. This webinar is sponsored by the Liberal Alliance. Before we start presenting, I would like to present some housekeeping notes. Please submit your questions to the Q&A engagement tool below the slides. A copy of today's slide back and additional materials. Are available in their resources. The webcast is being streamed through your computer. Is there is no dialing number. If you cannot hear the audio playing, check your speakers or headset. Some networks go flights with dance more slowly than others who show slides are behind. Pushing at 500 keyboard will refresh the page. Today we had a bad day for it to be parading in presenting a great pile of speakers, including Barber Martin from the AWAVA. The number to you and your woman and low alliance and duchatelet he left in it. Water is currently source. Pure water is not available, only it only represents 2.8% of the total available water on Earth. And from that. Drinkable water is only 1%. This is why the United Nations has set a global objective for all nations. Provides ticking affordable drinkable water for all by 2030. It requires we invest in a deck with infrastructure. Provide sanitation facilities and encourage hygiene. The texting and restoring water related ecosystem is essential and is one of the reasons why we are having this webinar today. Water's trust is defined by the World Health Organization's solo when the availability of water per year and habitant is less than 17102 meters. The Who analysis finds like 37 countries currently face extremely high levels of water stress, meaning that more than 80% of the water available to agricultural, domestic and industrial users is withdrawn annual. One is just affect more than two billion people with this figure project increased and reached 3 billion people by 2035. Now moving on to my presentation of people wanting to daily some survey results from the survey we conducted in the fall of 2020. I will be there guarding some of the top use cases that was more suited among the respondents. And my focus today will be on advanced meter infrastructure. Why bother investing in a reliable air? My sister bought 4. These cases range from reducing long revenue water to improving customer service. The survey be conducted had a special focus on smart meters in am I enabled by low power wide area networks. When it comes to metering and am I, each vertical has its own requirements. We look at the water utilities and water companies opinion in terms of their wish list of how the technology should behave and support. Finally, in the transform of the challenges that may slow down the adoption of water midstream. And am I in the context of U.S. market? Which will be a segue to pass the torch to Barbara Martin from the AWWA will present the state of the US industry. Providing a more global perspective and more comprehensive view of what US security concerns and realities are today. For these are not familiar with marriages where we pick another firm since 2002, we provide especially degeneration and pump leadership services. Our customers. If you weren't above service. He said it took place last fall and was conducted various regions of the work across a number of sectors, including water, heating, gas and electricity, accumulating 111 responses from utilities. Order this is possible directly related to the water industry and we have drawn some conclusions and findings for the water industry in this presentation. The majority of water into these have deployed private or EMR system. Hey mom, meaning automatic meter reading. Which is a solution that consists of a wireless bed acquisition device which captures real time, energy meter data and share the data. It will remove pace through wireless handheld device. We also know that the majority of networks are citywide networks, indicating the majority of utilities for the water industry are city owned. Or private companies operating in a single city, which size can vary from hundreds of meters to hundreds of thousands. But she worries about what you want. The Internet of Things starts with connectivity, but since I OC is widely diverse and multifaceted, will certainly cannot find a one size fits all communication solution. Is solution how this transom weaknesses in various network criteria? I providing long range communication of all inexpensive batteries. Help you want. Technologies are purpose built to support large scale IoT network sporting of advice areas from cities to do with culture. Now they need to some of the top use cases for am I. Sector such as water heating or gas, have their own particular sets of apartments or use cases, and in this case. The water utilities are looking to advance to use advanced metering infrastructure, which is the acronym for AM I primarily to leaders on a timely and cost effective basis. News capability, in turn, enables the reduction in operating expenditures from wasting water. And detecting leaks on a more timely basis. And also in turn, avoiding build shops and users and giving customers the ability to monitor and control the water consumption. BMI also enable utilities to be more efficient and improve their operation. Explorer processes. For example, removing the need to send field technicians to expect that particular part of the network and managing parts are remotely. When it comes to advanced metering requirements, we can infer from the survey responses that the battery life and network availability come first in the miner communities that follow the survey data security, which is increasingly sensitive. As the cyber attacks become more frequent and be more serious in consequences. Might believe Barbara at the WWW. Discuss some similar findings in her state of the industry survey and let's work availability in this context is related to the amount of time and network is up and running and there being constant monitoring. From the meters, another part of the water infrastructure. Some respondents have also indicated that they interpreted question as related to network coverage, which may be an issue in large part of the US as LP one networks, contrary to traditional theory networks are built based on demand in a particular area. Challenging our there's no shortage of challenges Wheeler perceived face by utilities. And not all challenges are technical as financial and business issues are very critical and and represent a real impediment to a faster, more aggressive adoption of am I. You can see here many cheeses fishing water, eteson, maybe cash strapped 'cause water is regulated. Market and utilities may not be able to pass on the rising cost of investments to their end users. As well as other Indians can do. Let me explain why you do that. So sensitive to the line item of the price of endnotes. That is a small computer device in their budgets along with battling for budget for their boards for their seona private. How do you lack of part of the business polls? Also an issue one that may be alleviated as utilities can expand into new use cases related to smart city applications that can enable them to generate additional revenue streams to pay for the water cap, ex. Others you get this feeling, lack of interoperability after raising issue when they have to manage a legacy. And property in our system and wanting to using a standard based EMI and having support tool. Super systems that don't talk to each other is definitely an issue. She had reverse side here, so this summarizes some of the findings from the survey. You know. Looking at the top use cases. Requirements and benefits above my Hillary Water utilities wanted reduced non revenue water from all sources, leakage pipeline burst etc. I'd be more improve the overall customer service, the precise building and alerts and outages, and improve the overall personal performances. In discussing earlier too, that they had requirements in terms of what equipment can do and so they require long range connectivity with indoor and some of the meters are in basements and and and. Large parts of concrete and need very high sensitivity modulation to be reached. But he liked increasingly the US. It is now 20 years from 10-15 years, few years back. And the reason is that he's going to be able to repair the meters at the same time. At the end of the life cycle of the battle, so we don't have to build there twice. So another very important requirement there. Also, are utilities wanted be able to support both AMR went by reading alongside? Am I an in in in this moves an efficient work? As they transition from property AMR, they're looking at standard based systems with a strong ecosystem. That they can choose from. Device availability, pricing, etc. Agreed, and we want you to have told us that they want to use a single platform for supporting other spark CV use cases such as smart lighting, parking, what have you? Which are possible ways for them to generate additional revenue streams? I don't have the actual benefits of the technology in a nation facing out aging infrastructure in in an elegant way. The most people in U.S. dollars. So we have a very strong telco. I see stuff that they rely on a public high or hybrid networking and use connectivity as a service and our friend attended will discuss this particular aspect of connectivity between the US. So this slide summarizes the situation of US water market. Very interesting market is very large, approaching before AMR and am I. We turned in meeting households in the US very fragmented market with 40,000 plus utilities. But parental law applies here with the top 100 water two days driving half of the market. And then you get it earlier. It's a market dominated by AMR and North America constitutes today the leading market for both AMR and am I solutions. The as I mentioned earlier, I see skills are lacking from most utilities, so they will die on companies like Senate too. Outsource their connectivity service. An IO T is really now driving a new deployment model based on demand so. Country to cellular traditional theater where they build and they will come in the context of IO T and I am I. This is really driven by the demand, so it's really. Go for utilities to to raise that need. For connectivity to make that happen, the good news is much easier to identify a Lorawan network than it is a cellular network. In summary, U.S. market is very fragmented, but the metering has had great potential as we discussed. The utilities are increasingly. Motivated and incentivized to become more efficient, to reduce ways to provide customers with power and empowerment to control their user agent and bills and become more eco friendly. So that's definitely a driver for investing in new technologies. Utilities are conservative when adopting a new technology, but once the tools are in it for very long haul, we're looking at 20 years replacement cycle here. We have seen the requirements that include longer battery life and and move transition to from AMR to am I and apart from the scalable to the new smart city services that we all envision an import to happen on a more scalable basis. And as I mentioned, IO T is driving a new deployment model based on demand, so which is quite different from. Select traditional cellular networks and so with this I would like to introduce Barbara Marching Director of Engineering and Technical Services at the American Water Works Association, which is going to give us a more comprehensive perspective of what the pain points and and the demographics and and and provide some additional details of what the American GP's market look like based on the. You really set up the water industry report. Thank you Barbara. Tell yours. Excellent, thank you. I blame for that introduction. As Ashley mentioned, I'm going to speak about a broad array WWA survey that has some nice connections to smart water and also helps to support many of the use cases that Blaine mentioned earlier. This report is called the State of the water industry, but before we get into the report itself I want to speak just briefly about the American Water Works Association. So a WWA as were known as the oldest and largest Association of water. Professionals in the world. We have more than 50,000 members and work with thousands of volunteers from across the globe to develop resources to support the water sector. A WWA is headquartered in Denver, Co. We have an office that supports advocacy in Washington DC and then also do work in Mumbai, India to truly realize our vision of building a better world through better water. So some of the resources that a WWA focuses on developing or listed on this slide that we do work to develop. ANSI accredited standards to support the water sector, including standards on water metering. We have a variety of manuals of water supply which touch on all aspects of utility operation including water auditing and water loss control. We support the development of many virtual and in person conferences and educational resources. We have a variety of peer reviewed publications, offer many, many volunteer opportunities to individuals to support the sector and then also focusing on. Industry research at which the state of the Water Industry survey certainly represents so this year's survey marks the 17th continuous year that a WWA has been soliciting this data from water utilities. The survey had three 3 / 3000 responses. A little more than half of them came from the utilities and other utilities surveyed. 88% of them were Public Utilities. Survey respondents represented a broad swath of utilities. There was good representation. From our smallest utilities, serving populations of less than 10,000 and then about 71.4% of utility respondents serve the population. Larger Venice move to the survey. Responses from utilities came from executive or management type functions, including financial management and the next most common respondent for this survey was from utility operation. So certainly the right people were were answering the questions that we ask them this year. So to start off, one of the questions that we ask on a perennial basis in the state of the Water Industry survey is people's opinion of the current state of the water industry and how sound they believe the industry will be five years from now. So, given that this survey was conducted in 2020 and the survey ran from about September to November of 2020, we just didn't know what to expect this year. It's a pandemic. It was a challenging year and we just, you know, kind of didn't have a clue. How those numbers were going to turn out? So imagine our surprise when the survey resulted in the highest results ever in its history. In terms of the state of the water industry and optimism towards the future. When I think about the drivers for these somewhat unexpected results, really, I think of three things. One of them is innovation. As Adlin mentioned, the water industry is conservative and sometimes a little bit slow to innovation. The COVID-19 pandemic, certainly. Forced our hand at in a day. Eating much more rapidly as we have in the past. The second reason is how quickly the utility industry came together for the rapid deployment of resources and activities to support the sector. Lots of resources developed in a very, very rapid manner, including the rapid distribution and deployment of PPE to water systems of all sizes, and finally the third driver for this that I see is collaboration. Really utilities came together during this time of crisis. And supported each other to a level I'm not sure I've seen in my 20 or so years with the sector so very encouraging results in terms of people's attitudes about the water sector this year. Another component of this survey is outlining the top 20 water sector challenges and the top ten are on this list. As you can see, the top two are renewal and replacement of aging water and wastewater infrastructure as well as financing for these capital improvement projects. I've highlighted emergency preparedness on this list. This was something that jumped up several spots on the list this year due to the pandemic and I'll give you a moment just to read the rest of the results on this slide themselves. One thing you might notice is how really all of these tie too smart water in some way and can be benefited by smart water in one way in some way or another. Certainly our top 2 results are aligned with what ASCE recently came out with for their 2021 infrastructure report card. Got a little better last year, but drinking water is still rated at a C minus wastewater not far behind at a D plus. So certainly a recognition all around that. There's room for improvement in the industry. Rounding out the top 20 challenges are issues like cyber security and the survey was conducted before Oldsmar, so this one's another one that's highlighted because it jumped up in importance over the years. So there's an increasing recognition of the need for cybersecurity, which certainly goes hand in hand with smart water and some of the other strong ties to smart water include asset management. Water conservation and efficiency, data management and water loss control so certainly among those top issues represent some good drivers for the use of smart water technologies. This slide indicates are how these various issues the top top you have trended over the past few years and you can see from 2017 to 2021 renewal and replacement of infrastructure and the financing to support that remain perennial issues. In fact, most of the top ones do with the exception of emergency preparedness as they mentioned earlier, jumped up several spots this year because of the pandemic, but really it just pushed all the other existing issues such as public understanding of the value of water. Little bit lower on the list. So 1/2 industries do to address these challenges. One of the things they do is plan and we did ask in the survey about various operation and maintenance plans and programs that utilities have implemented and plan to implement. And the good news with respect to water loss control programs is over 77% of utilities have these programs either fully implemented or have implementation in progress and this is important because water loss is a significant issue. A 2013 a WWA report. Quantify the water loss for a group of 246 utilities and what they found was 100 billion gallons, or sorry 130 billion gallons in total. Annual leakage, which cost these utilities $77 million in additional treatment and pumping costs. And that's not even getting to the apparent losses and the lost revenue in terms of consumption. So good to see that plans are headed in the right direction with respect to water loss control. So one other thing I want to point out is utilities ability to cover the full cost of services. This is a question we ask this year to quantify the economic impact of COVID-19 a little bit better, and this slide represents how utilities felt about their ability to cover the full cost of services. The dark Bar is prior to COVID-19. The light bar is after COVID-19 and you can see on this slide a shift before COVID-19 utilities were much more confident in covering their full cost of services and that shifted to being. Confident in covering the costs during the COVID-19 pandemic and a report conducted by Raftelis with collaboration from a WWA, an amwa in April in 2020 quantified the estimated impact of COVID-19 on our water and wastewater utilities and we were looking at an impact of over $30 billion in total so you know, water utilities looking to to fund these necessary improvements. The most popular option is water rates. And for water rates to really be successful being implemented, it takes public buy in which takes communication. And this is another place where smart water technology really buys into really ties into this issue. The technology collects the data, which helps utilities tell the story. Anne really defined for their customers. The value of the water services that they're receiving, so just a couple quick things to tie. Tie up my presentation with respect to resources that relate to water loss control. As well as smart water and you can see some of these on this slide. On the left we have a report of non revenue water performance indicators which may be downloaded from a www.org. We also have a manual specifically on butter audits and loss control programs along with accompanying free water audit software which also can be downloaded from the website and a variety of ANSI accredited standards and the one displayed on this slide has to do with the cold water meters. A WWE also offers a number of events that are more specific to water loss, including the North American Water Last conference, which will take place hopefully in person later in 2021 and also the water Infrastructure Conference and water loss is such an important issue to utilities. This is something that is regularly incorporated into a wwa's annual conference which is taking place virtually this June, so hopefully that's giving you an opportunity to see a bigger picture of water sector challenges. And how smartwater ties into it? I'm going to go ahead now and turn it over to Donna from the Laura Alliance to address her area of the presentation. Great thank you Barbara. You know I just wanted to say add Lane and Barbara did a great job identifying the water crisis and what I have to say is 2 full points in the presentation today and hopefully it's around the solution in the first point I'm going to cover is what is Lorawan? I'm sure many of you have heard of Lorawan but I'm going to go over while or Wan and Laura Alliance exist and I'm also going to talk about why the Lorawan standard is the solution for the water crisis. So I'm gonna move forward. So the Lord Alliance is an open global standard. We've been around for about 6 years and the Lower alliance focuses on IS, develops, promotes, and maintains the Laurel and standard. And why is an open standard important? It's critical to have a standard, particularly in the water industry, because the standard allows consistency. It allows innovation because it's open, particularly with a large membership, and it allows for interoperability. Key items that are needed within the water industry. The other thing that's very important that the lower alliance does is we manage a Lorawan certification program and the certification program is key because when these meters are diploid, we know it's a very long 1520 year life cycle. Many are buried underground. It is critical that these devices have been certified so that you know they're going to work as intended. You know the Lord answered vacation program tests, conformance. RF interoperability as well as security. So when you're looking to purchase and move forward for your am, I is really important to look at Lorawan certified devices because you need to be assured of the confidence. So just as an example, here is many many of our members that have smart watering metering solutions, so there's sort of smart modern water meters there. Smart readers, there's leak valve detectors. We also have reference design and platform, so it's important to note that this is just a sample of the types of Members that we have that offered varied solutions that offer choice that brings costs down for the water industry. Because it's important to have choice. So let me move on. When I talk about choice, I talk about our very large ecosystem and if you look we have one of the largest IoT ecosystems around the globe, and that's important because again, we want competition. We want. We don't want the water industry to be locked into one proprietary solution. That's probably one of the biggest mistakes have been made in the past, and that is when you pick a proprietary solution. You are locked in, you're locked into the control of that long term contract. There's no choice. There's unlimited innovation. There's limited ability to expand your market and grow, so it's very critical that you look at an open standard that has a plethora of Members that can provide all the. Needs today and also in the future. Let's look at why Lorawan specifically for water metering, and I I love this slide because it really identifies why Lorawan works so well for am I so let's start at the left side. So basically we know that the water industry needs a flexible network and Lorawan provides public networks, private networks, and even hybrid networks. Depending on the needs of the customer. We also know, as you heard in Barber's presentation. But money is an issue. Budget is an issue, and so Lorawan members provide either a capax where you can buy the equipment and manage it and expense out over the years, or an OpEx or a service model where if you don't have the capital you can come. You can contract for a service model that allows monthly billing on your financials, so it's a great choice of flexibility, particularly with the financial needs that are happening today. So next is firmware update over the air. And why is that important? We need to make sure that those 1520 year meters that are buried can be updated can be shut down if there's emergency services that can talk back and forth, so firmware update over the air is a key need for the water industry. Bidirectional security. We know that security is important and Lorawan was built with security in mind are very large ecosystem has all of the key players from. Devices to security to network players, to to a whole ecosystem of players that are the experts in each area and contribute to making Morrowind that the very best standard for water. And that is why we were built with security in mind bidirectionally. I know that the long battery life is critical. Lorawan's Battery is 20 years and you need to depend on that because if you have a battery life that has not been tested and is buried and something happens that is an issue. Obviously for cost, going up and repairing redeploying so you need to know, and again that's why certification is critical. So next we have long range and deep penetration and that is really important for the meters that have been buried underground under concrete. Lorawan does a phenomenal job through concrete through steel through long distance reaching the network, so that is very important in water, in particular with the meters. We have a strong ecosystem as identified and again I'm going to say one more time 'cause it's so important as a standard. The larger the ecosystem, the stronger the ecosystem. The open ecosystem will allow choice. Bringing down costs will allow you to grow as you expand your business. And finally, the easy to scale. So it's very important again that as a standard you can add in more and more use cases on your network that's already been deployed. And why is that important? That's important because we know that IoT is scaling and once you have a network infrastructure in place, you can add more and more and more use cases in your costs, an ROI your ROI increases in your costs go down as you continue to use the same network. So let me show you really quick here. You are just some examples of what a standardized large ecosystem can provide. An additional use cases. So with modern water metering, you're looking at least detection water, quality management, distribution management, waste management. But as a smart city you've got the infrastructure in, you can just add new devices to that already infrastructure that's in place for lighting and parking and trash bins and traffic lights and two. Lorawan is so easily unlike cellular models to expand, you can identify by just adding up a new gateway. So adenta densified at more and more and more use cases without putting in a whole new infrastructure and agricultural areas. We have irrigation crop management, landscape planning. It goes on and on and these are just some of the examples examples that once your network is up and running but it's a cap ex or op ex you can continue to use that infrastructure. So with that I'm going to move forward to Bruce. We came up there. And Bruce is a CEO of Senate Bruce. Would you like to take over? Yeah, thank you Donna. Well, thanks. Thank you to the other speakers on Bruce Chatterley. I'm CEO of Senate. We happen to be headquartered in, but I happen to be here in the in Seattle and Speaking of Water Boy, do we have water coming down today which is not a typical. So let me just get started where the previous speakers talked a lot about. You know customer research and standards. I'm going to try and focus a little bit more about how we implement these networks with real customers and how they've been. You know, kind of the experience that we've had in actually building these networks. Before I do that, I'd like to give you a quick overview of Senate. We are a developer of cloud based software and services for the on demand deployment of IoT networks, where they are needed when they are needed and at the right cost so. So we we really focused on helping utilities, water, gas and electric utilities build really purpose built. Io T networks for their specific applications, geographies etc. So we focus on utilities. We also partner with enterprise application developers for both indoor and an outdoor applications as well as operators like cable companies, wireless companies and they use our platform to build their own IO T networks. Based on the Lorawan standard. That they can use to sell to a variety of different customer segments. So we over the last two and a half years we've had a lot of experience, both positive and learning. Working with water utilities we've designed over 100 am I networks across North America and the world over the last two and a half years. Many of those networks we designed are up and running, and many of them are being built as we speak, so I'd like to focus a little bit now on how. You know how these things get built and how they get used and at the end I'll talk about a specific case study in terms of one of our partners, Ann, and how they've actually quantified the benefits they've received from the implementation of a MI network based on the lower land standard. Before I get too far into kind of the nitty gritty of networks, I wanted to just set the context at a very high level for how we view the Lorawan standard in the context of the other alternatives available for for creating these. Ah my network. So in terms of IoT connectivity, we divided into 3 technology categories. The first is you know, applications that are powered and wired, so that would be like Zigbee. Bluetooth Wi-Fi, the second would be applications that require very high bandwidth, two way communication and so that's really characterized by cellular technology and and that's things like real time video or telematics. For driverless cars. Those kinds of things. The third category is called Low Power Wide Area Networks, which the previous speakers have been talking about and most research has identified that as being more than half of the overall I IO T device, connectivity market, and so this. This market is characterized by applications requiring very small bandwidth in terms of data, very long range communications, and that really translates into efficient network designs. And very low cost these, as identified by you know, long battery life and devices that are available at very low cost. Because this category really represents millions and millions of potential deployments in terms of devices, in contrast to the other two categories. So. This slide is really to talk about the experience that we've had in the feedback and the themes that that we're hearing as we build these network designs and implement these networks. And so as I think about our experience over the last couple of years, working with utilities in particular water utilities, we kind of have six key themes that have emerged which actually echo a lot of the research that the previous speakers have talked about. The first is that utilities are looking for targeted. And unique network is designs that that reflect both their unique geography, the unique service locations that they have to cover, and in many cases the unique municipal assets that are available for deployment of gateways and and collectors. But almost as importantly, and this is a unique attribute of Lorawan, is there looking for specific service level agreements that define? The performance of the network at in terms of quality, reliability and uptime. And so that's a unique thing. For Lora Wan Networks, that can be purpose built purpose designed for those attributes. The second major theme is they're looking for once the networks are built into strong visibility into both the performance of the network, but also the performance of the devices. And the two are sometimes separated and the two are sometimes tide together and they're looking for visualization and control tools that allow him to decide when they're having problems. How do they? How do they address those problems and how can they diagnose and control those problems? The third thing is, is that they're looking for a constant stream of innovation, so so the one thing we're certain of is that we haven't gotten it right when we implemented our cloud based system. From the beginning, and so we're constantly listening to customers in terms of their experience and features and functionality that they need, and we chose a cloud based deployment for our network management, monitoring and visualization tools, and what that does relative to innovation is that allows us to listen very carefully to customer needs, build those features, and rapidly deploy those. Because it's a cloud based solution, we've done over 50 releases over the last couple years. Without a moment of downtime. And so customers get direct relationship between their feedback. US building the features and delivering it very quickly. So that's the third theme. The four themes around security. And I think you know it goes without saying that for critical infrastructure which water fits well within security is really key Lorawan as a standard has the best security model of any connectivity model available for IO T today where encryption starts at the device. And curries all the way through the network and the encryption keys are not available until you reach the application which is controlled by the the actual application provider slash customer. So security is is key to these customers and Lorawan is best in class. 5th is a bidirectional communication, and so it's not enough to have good solid communication upstream for meter data and leak detection. But also you need the ability to efficiently address the device for things like Valve shut off and shut off for non payment, and those kinds of things in the lower wind standard is extremely efficient where other IoT connectivity can can do downstream bidirectional functionality. The cost of doing that both in battery life. An actual network cost is very high relative to Lorawan. The last thing is that I talk about in terms of themes we're hearing from customers is cost effectiveness so you know we're often talking about network designs that result in a minimum of 10s of thousands of devices deployed, but very often hundreds of thousands if not millions of devices, and so the open ecosystem, the open standard as Donna said for the Lorawan standard, results in highly efficient production and choice on the manufacturing side. For meters and the communications components, but more importantly, the battery life is a key component of cost. Overall total cost of ownership and the shortest life networks that were contracting for is 10 years, but more typically it's 15 to 20 year life that we're guaranteeing both for the battery and for the network. So those are the themes that that we're hearing from customers as we as we you know, work on solving their problems in terms of purpose built in mind networks using the lower wind standards. What I thought as I talk through just a couple of examples for how we actually design and implement these networks. So the design as I said earlier, is critically important because it reflects the unique geography of the of the utility that we're working with, as well as their unique casales and coverage requirements and so. We start often with a file from the utility that has the list of service locations that are geocoded that they want to cover. The second file we usually start with is a. If available is a list of municipal assets available for deployment of Gateway. We import those two files into our cloud based network planning and design system and the output of that is a network design that shows very specifically service level agreement backed. Deployment metrics, in terms of the performance of the network, the number of devices that will be covered, and budgetary pricing in terms of how that network will be implemented. Then we acquired the sites required for the implementation of the collector slash gangways. We construct the network and then we do a full verification and SL a match in terms of service level agreements. The metrics we're guaranteeing we confirm that against the network design and the actual implementation of the network, and we deliver that network to the to the utility. So once the networks delivered, our system has a very rich set of scalable deployment and monitoring capabilities, and so we designed our all of our cloud based systems for scale so you know what's important is you have to be able to register 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of meters to the network simultaneously. Then you need to deploy those and you need to vary. Efficiently assess performance issues as you deploy and as these as these meters get in market, so we have a rich set of visualization tools which show how the devices are performing, how the networks performing an A series of alarms and monitoring tools that allow you to quickly diagnose problems and address those problems. So so the other thing that's important, I think Dana touched on this is that not all utilities, needs, interests and technical operational capabilities are the same, and so we're finding that there is a growing and fast effective. In fact, the fastest growing segment of our business is public slash network as a service. So this is the the model where the utility asks Senate along with the metering partner to completely outsource the network. So design it, build it. Own it operated. With with the service level guarantees and the metering company will deploy the meters and it's on being a water utility and and delivering great and efficient customer service, so that's very fast growing. There are a lot of utilities that like the historical way of doing business and have those skill sets, and that's called a private network, so a private network in our mind is defined as a utility that wants to buy the gateways deployed. The gateways operate them and. Private also from a security standpoint, means that the meters can Only Connect to those gateways and nothing else can connect to those gateways either from inside or outside the network. Model we're finding it very, very fast growing segment that we call hybrid, and so this is a private network is not just to find it, but the utility allows other applications to connect to those private gateways for rapid adoption of smart City applications, Senate has invented a concept called the LP Wan virtual Network, or Elvian. And what this allows is if the utility allows Sebnitz application partners to connect to those gateways. Not only can the utility quickly adopt and deploy new applications, but we will share a percentage of our revenue from those application customers with the utility for allowing those connections. And so it's a really a win win solution for both the utility applications Company and for Senate. So. What we're also finding is that water utilities become the anchor application for, you know, to really catalyze the deployment of a very, very dense network, because water meters often exists in pits and in hard to reach places. The networks we designed for water utilities end up being very dense. Outdoor application coverage applications, as well as providing very strong indoor coverage and so. As a result, what we're finding is utilities and municipalities. They are embedded within or represent, can then deploy a wide variety of other applications using that anchor network, and this can include things like smart city applications and other utilities. Could also ride on that, including electric, gas, electric and gas utilities. So with that as context, I wanted to close with the real life example slash case study or one of the customers that we've deployed in MI Network for so so this this utility has. I guess you would consider them small to medium size. They have about 30,000. Total total meters there. There smart meters were diploid in pits. Using a stand alone in my you and as a result of their requirements, we designed a network as a service where it's a totally outsourced public network but purpose built for this utility we designed and built that using a combination of commercial towers as well as municipal assets. Because the sum of the meters were in extremely hard to reach areas that network took about 90 days from start to finish to fully implement. An we deployed about 14,000 meters within six months and that initial deployment was so successful that we're just starting on the next 7000 meters to have a total of 21,000 meters in the first little over a year of deployment. So as we talked to the utility to determine exactly what the results of this am I deployment based on a Lorawan standard network was we got a couple really specific examples of benefits. The first is cost reduction and that is manifested both in their ability to completely eliminate a third party meter reading contract, but also in the form of waste water loss or wasted beach water loss. They moved from 12% water loss to 3.5% and I think it's continuing to improve. The other thing that they experienced is tremendous improvements in customer service. So now that you have the the data at your fingertips about about what's happening at a very granular level at the customer location, you can proactively notify the customer of leaks. But as importantly, customer service representatives will have that information at their fingertips. And they can provide better customer service and resolve either disputes or or questions more quickly, which also results in better employee morale, reduced carbon footprint, so a better environmental impact by reducing trucks required for drive by metering and then employees safety in in during the covid pandemic. Because now you don't need to send employees into the community to read meters. And Lastly, we're in the process of evaluating and deploying additional. Additional applications, so the picture you see on the right is an example of the real life network design. I an example of a gateway diploid and a picture of the meters that you get from the Senate platform and the Senate system in terms of what the deployment looks like across this municipality. So with that I'll close by giving you some resources. So if you have more questions about Senate or we like to just poke around and do more research on Lorawan and the building of these networks, please visit the Senate website which you see on your screen here. And with that I will turn it back over to Adelene too close and take questions. Adling, thank you. Thank you both and thanks to all the presenters for grade. Material, good content. I will now open the movie art for some live questions from the audience. OK, great, so let's start with the first question. And thanks again for the great presentations. So we have a first question for Barbara at the AWWA. You know you have provided some good insights about state of the industry, how have water utilities being impacted by COVID-19 in addition to the financial impacts which were discussed during your presentation. That's a great question. Thank you so a WWA conducted a series of pulse surveys starting in about April of last year and running through the summer to really try to get a good handle on some of the challenges that water utilities were facing. Specific to the pandemic. Some of those identified during that survey were workforce challenges, both related to keeping workers safe and at a distance as well as challenges with absenteeism. There were some challenges experienced. Relative to the supply chain, both of things like treatment chemicals and of PPE challenges and facing operator as you kacian with the quick switch to virtual and a lack of in person. Workshops and training which is still continuing to starting to come back slowly and probably one that relates most to this topic is low water usage and stagnation of water impacting water quality and buildings and many utilities were able to use water meter. Data to get a feel for what industries what companies experienced low water usage so that they could do some proactive outreach to these organizations to encourage them to to follow CDC recommended guidance in terms of water flushing to maintain water quality, particularly as those buildings re populated so you can see all the details of these surveys at 8 www.a.org/coronavirus and get a feel for more of the details. Thank you. Thank you Barbara. Great by the way, we're getting a lot of questions from the audience, so thanks again. We won't be able to answer every question during this live webinar. Best rest assured that we will follow up with you and answer some of them in writing, and some of them have been or currently being answered to the live chat box as we speak. Second question here for Adora at the LA Alliance. The question is, you know you mentioned that? Number one is standardized slash certified. Did you speak to the lack of interoperability on the application layer, which is needed for water devices? If the goal is true interoperability, what are your thoughts on this challenge? Yes hi. Well the goal is true interoperability and the Laurel Lance is working with many standards associations, especially in the metering industry, to ensure that the interoperability on the application layer and just to clarify the Lorawan certification, is for the device. It's device certification to ensure that it can connect with our Laurel and networks and security and all the other things that are tested so. An example, particularly water industry, is wireless M bus, right? So, Laura Wynne has many bridges that are Lorawan certified and used to connect wireless mbus over Lorawan, and you know, Luann is really widely being used in metering in general and industry by by energy utilities as well. So just another example of working with another standard is the LMS over Lorawan, which is used primarily for smart electric metering. But that is our goal is we work with other alliances to bridge the gap from what was to where we're going forward and to make them a truly, you know, an open LP. One standard. OK, great, thank you. I don't know that you turn. That idea, Senator, we have a question here which is very interesting because it touched on that regarding M RNA and micro existence. Do you have a scenario? Solutions on which installed based AMR system is usually based in Ambus are backed by Lorawan gateways to deploy and my. Yeah, so setting the mbus comment aside, you know 'cause? I'm not an expert in Mbus, but the the. Relating to AMR, I think it's it's a. It's a very important point because many utilities take time to transition to a full EMI network. Some never fully transition, some transition over a long number of years, and so I think it it it we're finding that it's actually very common to have a coexistence of Lorawan based. Am I an AMR in the same network? For either some period of time or permanently, and so I think that you know the rationale is either transitioning or there are some really really difficult to reach places for any communications technology you know by geography and by location that you almost always require at you know, and on kind of over the air you know, kind of generalized RF network so. So I think what I would say is it's important as you consider deploying and am I network and if those conditions exist to really seek a partner that has both on the hardware side, the flexibility to do this as well as on the application side the flexibility to to take multiple data feeds and and create a single consistent interface. Great, thanks Bruce. Our time is almost up and you know, we we, we do respect your busy agenda, so unfortunately will not be able to answer all of the questions right now at the moment. But rest assured that we will follow up in writing. And As for the many questions that have been received, a lot of them very technical and most of them very interesting. And I want to thank the presenters. Or their great presentations today. And the furniture in the questions. I want to thank of the audience is processing this webinar and of course the audience for putting up and that ends the webinar today. Thank you very much. _1714152389128