How can utilities modernize network management, preserve expertise, and reduce operational risk?
Utilities are using digital network management to preserve operational expertise, improve real-time visibility and reduce operational risk as workforce demographics change.
Utilities are facing a growing challenge: maintaining reliable network operations while experienced operators retire and system complexity continues to increase. Many are navigating this transition while addressing water loss, aging infrastructure, workforce constraints, rising customer expectations and growing demands for resilient, secure infrastructure. The operational knowledge that keeps networks running efficiently—from recognizing developing pressure anomalies to understanding the history of critical assets—often resides with a relatively small number of experienced employees.
As workforce demographics change, utilities are looking for ways to ensure that critical expertise remains accessible across every shift and every crew. The challenge is not simply replacing retiring employees. It is preserving decades of institutional knowledge that often exists outside of manuals, standard operating procedures, and training programs. Knowledge such as which pressure fluctuations may signal a developing break, which assets require closer monitoring, or which operational responses are most effective during unusual conditions can be difficult to transfer through traditional approaches alone.
Increasingly, utilities are using AI-enabled tools to help capture, organize and surface operational knowledge that might otherwise be lost as experienced employees retire. By transforming historical data, operational context and expert insights into accessible guidance, digital platforms can help accelerate knowledge transfer and support the next generation of operators.
As utilities continue modernizing critical infrastructure, digital tools are becoming increasingly important not only for improving efficiency and decision-making, but also for strengthening operational resilience across increasingly complex networks.
Rather than relying solely on institutional knowledge developed over decades, utilities can provide operators with insights that support faster decision-making, improve operational consistency, and reduce risk across the network.
The shift is gaining momentum as utilities increasingly adopt digital technologies informed by real-world operational experience. The recent Global Water Intelligence commentary on Xylem's majority investment in Idrica1, a water data management and analytics company, created by Global Omnium, highlights growing industry interest in digital platforms developed through direct utility operating experience.
Why is the expertise gap putting utility network operations at risk?
Utilities across the water sector are facing a significant workforce transition. Experienced operators who understand the nuances of their networks—from recognizing developing pressure anomalies to understanding the history of critical assets—are approaching retirement. While new operators bring valuable skills and perspectives, institutional knowledge developed over decades can be difficult to transfer through training programs alone.
The operational consequences can be immediate. Diagnostic time after events increases. Maintenance decisions become more conservative and more labor-intensive. Teams often rely on additional manual checks and verification steps as experienced operators leave the workforce and operational confidence becomes less consistent across shifts. Over time, these inefficiencies can increase costs, slow response times, and place additional pressure on already constrained resources.
At the same time, approximately 21% of municipal water withdrawals globally are lost through leakage and inefficiency2. That is treated, pressurized water that never reaches a customer. Recovering even a fraction of it depends on timely information and the kind of real-time network visibility that expert-dependent operations cannot consistently deliver across every shift. Utilities need visibility across their networks that allows all operators—not just the most experienced—to identify developing issues before they become costly service disruptions.
Digital network management helps utilities address these challenges by connecting real-time visibility with operational expertise. By making critical knowledge more accessible across the workforce, utilities can improve consistency across shifts, build operational confidence and reduce the risks associated with workforce transition.
What does it look like when utilities act on real-time data?
For utilities, the value of real-time visibility is measured by operational outcomes. It can help teams improve system performance, respond more effectively to changing conditions, strengthen resilience and make better use of existing infrastructure.
Houston, Texas, is partnering with Xylem to improve flood monitoring and help city officials respond more effectively to extreme weather events. Using a flood-intelligence platform that combines data from sensors installed across the city, Houston has expanded its ability to monitor water levels in flood-prone locations and provide earlier warning of potentially dangerous conditions. Data from the sensors is integrated into a centralized intelligence platform, giving emergency services greater visibility and helping them make more informed decisions during severe weather events.
Houston's experience demonstrates how real-time visibility can help utilities and municipalities move from reactive response to proactive operations. By providing timely information about changing conditions across the network, digital monitoring technologies can help organizations identify risks sooner, coordinate responses more effectively and improve resilience in the face of increasingly frequent and severe weather events.
In Málaga, Spain, EMASA (Empresa Municipal Aguas de Málaga) is using Xylem Vue to improve water efficiency and strengthen network management in one of Europe's most water-stressed regions. By centralizing operational data, conducting continuous water balance analysis and using automated anomaly detection across its network, the utility has improved operational visibility and proactive response. As a result, EMASA reduced water consumption from 250 to 170 liters per person per day and cut non-revenue water to 10-15%, helping the utility improve efficiency while adapting to ongoing drought conditions and seasonal demand fluctuations.
While every utility's challenges are different, these examples highlight a common outcome: better operational decisions supported by timely, accessible information. By combining real-time visibility with operational expertise, utilities can improve performance, strengthen resilience and make better use of existing infrastructure.
What structural shift is reshaping how utilities approach network management?
Utilities are increasingly looking for digital solutions that do more than provide data. As workforce demographics change and network complexity grows, digital network management is becoming an operational strategy rather than simply a technology investment. By combining system-wide visibility with operational knowledge, utilities can help every operator make more informed decisions, respond faster to emerging issues, and maintain consistency across shifts. At a time when utilities are facing aging infrastructure, increasing operational complexity, and growing expectations around resilience, modernization has become an operational imperative rather than a future aspiration.
Digital solutions, like Xylem Vue, are shaped by real-world utility operations. These solutions are designed not only to collect and analyze information, but also to help utilities apply that information in ways that improve performance, reduce risk and make institutional knowledge more accessible across the workforce. Increasingly, AI-enabled capabilities can help utilities transform operational expertise into actionable guidance, making it easier for operators to access relevant knowledge when they need it. Rather than searching through multiple systems, reports or historical records, operators can interact with information more naturally, helping them make faster, more informed decisions. Importantly, modernization efforts are increasingly focused on enabling secure, resilient operations, ensuring utilities can benefit from greater connectivity, visibility and automation while effectively managing risk.
Several forces are accelerating the urgency of this shift, including increasing water demand from AI-driven economic growth, workforce transitions, aging infrastructure, and the need for more resilient and secure utility operations. AI-associated water use grew to 6.26 trillion gallons globally in 20252, a 38% increase over 2020, and is expected to more than double by 2050. Utilities that improve network efficiency and reduce water losses can help unlock additional capacity without developing new water supplies.
At the same time, nearly one-third of the US utility workforce will be eligible to retire within the decade3. Digital technologies that capture, preserve and distribute operational expertise are becoming increasingly important for utility resilience. AI-enabled capabilities can help utilities go a step further by making expert knowledge easier to access, understand and apply in daily operations. Rather than simply preserving institutional knowledge for future generations, these tools can help operators quickly surface relevant insights and guidance when they need it most. By making knowledge more accessible across the workforce, utilities can help maintain performance, reduce operational risk and prepare the next generation of operators. As workforce and infrastructure pressures continue to grow, these capabilities are becoming an important component of long-term utility resilience.
The recent Global Water Intelligence commentary on Xylem's majority investment in Idrica reflects this broader trend. Developed by Global Omnium to support its own utility operations, Idrica provides an example of how operational experience can help inform digital innovation. As utilities continue to modernize network management, solutions grounded in real-world operational requirements are attracting increased attention across the sector.
Digital network management helps utilities preserve operational expertise by making critical knowledge accessible across the workforce through real-time data, asset history, decision-support tools and AI-enabled guidance. By connecting institutional knowledge with operational data, utilities can help operators quickly access relevant insights, make more consistent decisions, respond faster to emerging issues and improve overall system performance.
Smart network management gives utility teams continuous real-time visibility across their distribution and collection systems—monitoring pressure, flow, and asset performance without requiring manual rounds. Teams identify pressure anomalies and developing leaks before they cause service disruptions, and they act on evidence rather than inference.
The most direct approach is deploying digital water management technology that translates expert judgment into structured, accessible guidance. Predictive analytics, AI models and unified network management platforms let newer staff operate with confidence, reduce diagnostic time after events, and prevent conservative over-responses that consume limited labor budgets.
Digital network management relies on connected sensors, operational technology and real-time data to provide visibility across utility networks. As utilities connect more assets and systems, cybersecurity becomes an essential part of modernization rather than a separate initiative. Building security into digital infrastructure helps utilities manage risk, protect critical operations and confidently expand the use of connected technologies that improve visibility, efficiency and decision-making.
Xylem Vue is a digital water management platform that integrates real-time data from smart meters, SCADA systems, network sensors, and operational databases into a unified environment for network monitoring, analytics, and decision support. Utilities use it across drinking water distribution, wastewater collection, and treatment operations to improve reliability, recover revenue, and manage compliance.
The path forward
The most successful utility networks of the future will combine operational expertise with real-time visibility, data-driven decision-making and resilient digital infrastructure designed to support increasingly complex operations.
What the City of Houston and EMASA examples demonstrate is that digital network management is no longer simply a technology initiative. It is helping utilities improve performance, preserve institutional knowledge and respond more effectively to workforce and infrastructure challenges. As utilities work to address water loss, aging infrastructure and workforce transitions, access to timely information and consistent decision-making is becoming increasingly important.
The teams managing water networks already understand what they need: real-time visibility, knowledge that can be shared across every shift and the confidence to act before a developing issue becomes a service disruption or regulatory concern. Digital network management helps make those capabilities more accessible across the organization, allowing utilities to operate more consistently regardless of workforce changes or operational complexity.
The operational knowledge your most experienced team members have built over decades is too valuable to leave undocumented. By connecting that expertise with real-time visibility, utilities can help ensure critical knowledge continues to support the network long after individual operators retire. By making operational knowledge easier to capture, access and apply, AI-enabled tools can help extend the value of that expertise across shifts, teams and future generations of operators.
As workforce transitions accelerate and infrastructure challenges intensify, utilities that successfully combine operational expertise with digital visibility will be better positioned to maintain reliability, improve efficiency and build long-term resilience. As utilities continue modernizing critical infrastructure, building resilience into digital operations from the outset will be essential to maintaining reliable service and public trust.
Snehal Desai, EVP, Growth & Commercial Officer, Xylem
1https://www.globalwaterintel.com/articles/has-xylem-found-the-key-to-the-digital-market-in-valencia