Last night was filled with celebrations as our KTP project with Dr. Milad Latifi, "Ground Truth: Simulating Performance of Underground Water Mains with AI and Sensors," won the prestigious "Bright Future Award for Early Career Research Impact."
This accolade is part of University of Exeter’s Knowledge Exchange Awards, which recognise outstanding research contributions that have a significant real-world impact.
The category featured a strong lineup of contenders, including notable finalists from Network Rail with Natural Building Systems and The League for Mental Health of Slovakia.
.png)
In 2021, Datatecnics embarked on a challenge to build an AI-based solution that could, more accurately than ever before, monitor and predict the condition of critical water mains.
It was clear from the start that such an ambitious goal would require world-class water engineering expertise – enter KTP candidate Dr. Milad Latifi.
With a PhD in Water Engineering from the University of Tehran, and an impressive 12+ years of experience within the water sector, Milad brought a wealth of expertise and knowledge into the project.
Over the course of three years, the Datatecnics team worked in close collaboration with Milad, supported by brilliant colleagues from University of Exeter’s Centre for Water Systems.
Together, they turned Ground Truth from an ambitious idea into a real-world capability that would not only give water companies a method of real-time condition monitoring of their most critical mains, but also the ability to predictively model their assets’ behaviour and integrity under endless scenarios across different variables.
"The KTP partnership has been crucial for product development at Datatecnics. Through deep knowledge, ambition, and close collaboration fostered in the KTP, we have been able to build solutions that give water utilities an unprecedented level of prediction accuracy and modelling capability for their critical pipelines," said Suhayl Zulfiquar, CEO at Datatecnics.
“We have created a best-in-class technology solution for monitoring pipes. No other company in the world offers this kind of technology,” added Dr. Milad Latifi, former KTP associate and now Principal Water Systems Modeller at Datatecnics.
.png)
While the KTP project has been instrumental for innovative product development at Datatecnics, it has also advanced the field of research; the Finite Element Model (FEA) underpinning the Ground Truth solution has been explored in multiple peer-reviewed journal articles published over the course of the project.
As a testament to the real-world applicability and demand for such an advanced asset health solution, Datatecnics has won multiple pilots with water utilities seeking to better understand the health and remaining useful life of their buried, critical infrastructure.
